This is the Steam Deck's biggest problem, and no, it isn't the aging CPU

I love gaming on my Steam Deck, but it's becoming increasingly frustrating to see huge games bypass the handheld all because some anti-cheat software doesn't play nice with Linux. This feeling is renewed following the release of F1 25, a franchise that will be unplayable on the Steam Deck for as long as EA persists with its proprietary anti-cheat software.

Despite being the best gaming handheld, there's no doubt that the Steam Deck has its drawbacks. One huge issue is the age of its AMD chip, which contains the CPU and GPU, and is now struggling to keep up with modern triple-A games such as Doom The Dark Ages. Despite this, anti-cheat is the biggest threat to the Steam Deck's dominance, as it's already had a huge impact on the game library. We're also likely to see the Steam Deck 2 eventually released with better hardware, but it won't be able to fix this anti-cheat crisis.

Anti-cheat software causes compatibility issues with Linux because of kernel-level differences between Windows and Linux. Most developers understand the appeal of the much larger user base on Microsoft's operating system, leaving Linux and Steam Deck gamers out in the cold.

The most notable titles currently unplayable on the Steam Deck, either entirely or with large parts of content missing, include Grand Theft Auto 5, the EA Sports FC series, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Rainbow Six Siege, and even Fortnite. These are some of the biggest games in the world, and for the most part, they're complete non-starters on the Deck.

The problem is so prominent that there is even a site dedicated to tracking games with anti-cheat software and their compatibility with Linux and other niche operating systems. It's called Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? Over 1,100 games are tracked, and there is even a handy breakdown of which providers are used and how many games still run in some capacity, despite running an anti-cheat system.

We can see that 15 games in total use EA anti-cheat, and none of them work on the Steam Deck in any capacity, while 365 games are tracked using Easy anti-cheat with only six of those games deemed incompatible, but a futher 193 are classified as "broken", meaning any online aspect of the game is locked away due to the anti-cheat system.

In the grand scheme of things, Are We Anti-Cheat Yet only lists 41 total games that are "denied" due to anti-cheat, but 633 are "broken." This totals 674 games that don't work as intended due to anti-cheat software, a huge number, and it includes some of the biggest games around.

There is a need for anti-cheat software, that's not up for debate, but it's time to find solutions to this problem that don't exclude people who are quickly becoming a substantial part of the market – Steam Deck or SteamOS users.

Here's hoping that, as the Steam Deck continues to win over gamers and SteamOS makes its way to even more handhelds now that it's entered an open beta phase, developers reconsider nonchalantly excluding Linux users.

For your chance to win one of Valve's handhelds, you can check out this Nvidia Steam Deck OLED competition. If you're already a Deck owner, you can check out our picks for the best Steam Deck games, where we've picked out 30 incredible titles that run natively on the console.

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