GTA Online is no longer officially supported by Steam Deck, thanks to the introduction of anti-cheat software that may actually be compatible with Steam Deck. What now?
Rockstar added BattlEye Anti-Cheat to GTA 5 and GTA Online in an update on Tuesday, September 17th, along with options to disable Story Mode anti-cheat in the Rockstar Games Launcher or third-party launchers. In the process, Steam Deck support went down like a police helicopter in a traffic jam.
“Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online,” the announcement reads. change log baldly notes. “You will be able to play GTAV Story Mode, but you will not be able to play GTA Online.”
This is all a bit weird because, as Edge note that for years you could configure BattlEye to work on Steam Deck, although Linux-based operating systems don’t support it by default thanks to Windows’ Proton compatibility layer. Apparently it’s as basic as sending the BattlEye vendor an email. As PC Player let’s add, GTA Online is or was one of the most popular games on the Steam Deck, so all this causes some confusion in Los Santos.
In its changelog, Rockstar blames Valve for the loss of compatibility. “GTAV and GTA Online are not officially supported on Steam Deck, and all support questions should be directed to Valve’s Steam Deck Support and the community,” it reads. That’s exactly what players have been doing. One Reddit user allegedly I heard from a Valve representative that they are “working with Rockstar Games to find a solution.”
Honestly, I’m a little confused, but there’s a precedent for large publishers uncertain whether they can run anti-cheat software on the Linux-based Steam Deck operating system. It’s sheltered to assume you can still run GTA Online on Deck if you dual-boot Windows and skip the Proton layer.
If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that GTA Online has a cheating problem. I’m curious to see how they deal with that and how they deal with GTA Online in general once GTA 6 is released.
