Rainbow Six Siege and GTA 5 now “Playable” on Steam Deck, despite anti-cheat

Valve has simply issued an replace to its Steam Deck compatibility rankings for GTA 5 Enhanced and Rainbow Six Siege, declaring them each as Playable. That’s regardless of each video games utilizing the identical BattlEye anti-cheat software program that blocks Linux players, like these utilizing Valve’s handheld gaming PC, from enjoying on-line with different players.

Whereas the Steam Deck continues to be one of the best handheld gaming PC for many players, consistency with the platform’s verification rankings has been an issue for a while. Whereas GTA 5 Enhanced’s primary offline mode doesn’t require anti-cheat, GTA On-line does, as does Rainbow Six Siege, leaving a query mark over why the score has been modified.

The rankings for each video games have been up to date earlier right now, with none extra steering from Valve concerning the playability of both sport on-line. SteamDB pages for each GTA 5 Enhanced and Rainbow Six Siege present that compatibility entries for each video games have been up to date at precisely the identical time.

It implies that GTA 5 is now listed as playable on the Steam Deck for the primary time for the reason that non-enhanced model misplaced its Steam Deck Playable score when the BattlEye anti-cheat was added to the sport in September 2024.

Excellent news for players? Effectively, probably not. As I’ve talked about, GTA 5 Enhanced is theoretically playable offline within the core offline sport mode, however the GTA On-line expertise is simply too firmly built-in into the sport to easily disregard – the score simply doesn’t make sense.

Declaring GTA 5 as Unplayable final yr was an in any other case constant transfer with earlier selections, akin to Ghost of Tsushima’s Unplayable score when that sport’s PC port launched on Steam again in Might 2024. That sport was rated Unplayable because of the incompatibility of SteamOS with its Legends multiplayer mode, regardless of the in any other case strong efficiency in single-player.

BattlEye, the anti-cheat element utilized in each video games, is a well-liked possibility amongst builders, utilized in video games together with Future 2, PUBG, and Fortnite, amongst others. Whereas BattlEye does technically assist Linux, it’s as much as builders so as to add assist for it of their video games. For probably the most half, improvement groups have as a substitute chosen to dam Linux assist solely, stopping players (like these with a Steam Deck working SteamOS) from enjoying on-line in any respect.

That’s why the change in Steam Deck compatibility for each video games is a complicated one which makes the system even much less constant than earlier than. It’s much more complicated when you think about Rainbow Six Siege, a multiplayer FPS that, by definition, requires its on-line parts to work appropriately for players to wish to play it.

Whereas playable within the sense that the sport runs, a Steam Deck Playable score for this sport is arguably extra absurd than for GTA 5 Enhanced, as players received’t actually be capable of do a lot with the sport put in.

Exterior of the replace, Valve hasn’t made any public remark in regards to the playability of each video games. Whereas an replace to BattlEye to assist Linux in each video games could be vastly welcomed by Steam Deck players, it’s not possible that we’ll be seeing that right here. For now, in case you’re a Steam Deck gamer who desires to play these video games on-line, you’ll want to put in Home windows on the machine to take action.