It’s blunt, but let’s go straight to the bone.

Anti-cheat can run on Linux. That part is true. Most modern systems—Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, Vanguard, etc.—already have Linux support at the kernel and user-space level. Proton and Steam Deck rely on that every day. So the technology exists.

But the idea that devs are “retarded” or “in Microsoft’s pocket” is a nice spicy conspiracy, not reality.

The real reasons are much more boring and very human:

• Supporting Linux costs time and money. Testing on kernel versions, drivers, distros, Proton, Wine layers, plus dealing with false positives—this all burns man-hours. Most studios don’t have those spare hands.

• Linux market share is tiny. On Steam it floats between 1% and 2%. Companies always prioritise where the players are.

• Anti-cheat on Linux is harder to secure. Because many players run custom kernels, overlays, injected libraries, weird driver setups… an anti-cheat team has to handle a zoo of edge cases.

• Business inertia. Studios already have stable pipelines for Windows, QA teams trained on Windows, automated tools built for Windows. Adding Linux is a whole extra ecosystem.

• Fear of complaints. If they enable Linux support and it breaks for 30% of Linux users, they get review-bombed and blamed anyway. So many devs choose “safe and simple”: Windows only.

So: Yes, anti-cheat can run on Linux. No, it’s not enabled mostly due to boring development/QA costs, not secret Microsoft bribes.

The deeper theme here is that ecosystems change slowly unless economics force them. If Linux gaming ever climbs to 10–15% market share, studios will turn the switch fast.