Over the weekend, Soul Calibur 6 Linux players discovered that the game will ban their account if they try to go online. Not even going back to Windows will let them play networked multiplayer. While Soul Calibur 6 doesn’t have an official port to Linux, it is supported through Steam’s Steam Play program using Proton. Added by Valve earlier this year, this compatibility layer enables Windows games on the platform.
While some initially blamed the Denovo DRM for the issue, the problem seems to be with the game’s anti-cheat system. As noted on Reddit, Tekken 7 also supports Denovo and Proton and has not run into any issues with Linux players. Since both games come from the same publisher, it’s safe to assume that something else is at work here. Neither Bandai Namco or Valve have come out with a statement regarding the issue at this time.
While this does seem like a red flag error, Valve did foresee things like this occurring. On the page introducing the Proton software, Valve warns that anti-cheat could be a problem. “It’s likely that some games using complex DRM or anti-cheat systems will be difficult, or even impossible to support.” Whether it is anti-cheat software or something else affecting Soul Calibur 6 specifically is still up in the air.
This isn’t the first time that Bandai Namco has run into issues with their online games. Perhaps most famously, multiple Dark Souls games have suffered from hackers. These invaders could erase a player’s levels, destroy their items and then ban them from the game entirely. This was eventually patched up for the most part, so there’s hope that Bandai Namco can restore functionality to those affected by this egregious error. Until then, they’ll have to be happy working their way through the Libra of Souls single-player story.
