Sorry Steam Deck Apex Legends players, those Linux cheaters means the battle royale won’t be officially supported on the handheld anymore

In order to stop Apex Legends’ Linux cheating problem, Respawn is pulling support for the Steam Deck.

Obviously a majority of players that play games like Apex Legends will do so on console or PC, particularly if they want to get good at the game, but there will be plenty of those who just want to have a fun casual time laying in bed playing it on their Steam Deck. Unfortunately, though, unless you’re a bit tech savvy, you now won’t be able to – Apex Legends is currently officially available via Steam, and as such has been a game you can play on Valve’s handheld, the Steam Deck. Except earlier this week, Respawn announced it’s pulling support for Linux, which the Steam Deck runs on.

“In our efforts to combat cheating in Apex, we’ve identified Linux OS as being a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats,” reads a blog post explaining the decision. “As a result, we’ve decided to block Linux OS access to the game. While this will impact a small number of Apex players, we believe the decision will meaningfully reduce instances of cheating in our game. Linux is used by default on the Steam Deck. There is currently no reliable way for us to differentiate a legitimate Steam Deck from a malicious cheat claiming to be a Steam Deck (via Linux).”

This isn’t that unusual, as there are plenty of big shooters that have never supported the Steam Deck, including Fortnite, but as noted by GamesRadar, Apex Legends was quite a popular title on the handheld, sitting within the top 50 most played games in the past year.

The blog post does note that it is still possible to play on the Steam Deck, you just have to install Windows on the device, which might not be something everyone wants to do. Sorry, Steam Deck players! Respawn does say that it looks “forward to sharing future anti-cheat updates,” so I guess you can cross your fingers and hope this gets reverted at some point.