Roblox on Linux Deprecation Notice #397
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Financial decisions lead us to this, then? It was worth the try, and we had our fun. I do not have much to say, so, let us simply hope that in the future, Wine will no longer be blocked. But as of now, I can only do one thing, and it is to thank you all, the developers, the community, the nerds, and gamers out there, of all Linuxy backgrounds and even from other projects, for all the amazing work and support. Thank you for everything.o7 |
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R.I.P RoL |
vinegar may still exist, just studio only for the meantime. |
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Well it has been a great time playing Roblox on Linux, thank you the contributors of Vinegar for making my experience possible. I guess I will wait until this becomes possible again... |
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rip brah |
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thank you bitdancer for trying ❤️ |
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Yeah let's block access to two percent of players who just want to have fun and not do anything about the exploiters who make up a huge majority of Windows players. Way to go, Roblox. |
This is a horribly detached take. Roblox actively wants to support Linux, but given said low market share, they cannot justify the cost of supporting it natively. WINE was disabled because of people making wine-specific exploits that bypassed the then relaxed Hyperion checks. Bitdancer said maybe one day, but saying “Way to go, Roblox” isn’t going to change anything. |
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These projects will still be maintained. Studio on Linux isn't going anywhere. |
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This sucks, but I hope Roblox at least noticed the demand and will work with Byfron to make Hyperion work better on Linux. I doubt this will be permanent. |
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At this point, I think it's safe to assume that it's an action specifically against Linux for no reason at all, unless they're cooking something up behind our backs, which I honestly doubt. It makes no sense for Roblox to block Wine completely, since most cheats have simply disappeared after the release of the new anticheat, and even if there are some left, they most likely won't even run on Wine, since it's not a 1:1 Windows "emulation", which is sure to cause problems... roblox with new anticheat ran perfectly on wine and as far as I know byfron/hyperion isn't even a kernel level anticheat and running it on wine proved that unless there is some kernel emulation included in vinegear, so correct me if I'm wrong.... |
I believe the problem was related to the fact that Byfron had to somewhat self-disable itself, making it easier to reverse-engineer [and break it] |
Since you're open for corrections, you must know that Hyperion definitely did not work perfectly with Wine. When the anti-cheat came out, it actually broke every single Linux compatibility layer made for Roblox at the time. It was only after pressure from developers that the guys working on Hyperion added Wine compatibility, and this "compatibility" simply involved disabling some of the most protective features of the anti-cheat. What is happening right now is that people are starting to abuse this compatibility fix to develop exploits (e.g., by making Roblox on Windows believe that it's running on Wine, when it's really not), so the obvious solution is to remove it. You cannot have Wine compatibility without this fix present - it disables quite literally the one and only thing that breaks Wine compatibility (unless there are more things, in which case what I'm describing is further justified), so there truly is no alternative solution other than making the platform more vulnerable to exploits. In this case, Roblox's decision is entirely justified. It's not like Roblox is having fun by randomly disabling compatibility with Linux. It's something they are doing because they have to mitigate hacks, and this is the only competent solution for a glaring problem that involves the anti-cheat literally disabling parts of itself just to make it work on Wine. There is no "alternative" to this, unlike what some people believe. There is no "better solution" where you still have Wine support and a perfectly compatible anti-cheat, short of spending precious time and resources rewriting the entirety of the anti-cheat for Linux (which is cost prohibitive considering the complexity involved and the relatively tiny benefits of doing this). |
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Will the Roblox Studio be blocked too, or only Player? As I understand, anti-cheat protection is needed only for player, isn't it? |
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Studio does not have Byfron, so it will still function. |
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Why intentionally blocked? |
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@StormyIceLeopard It's a soft check, merely there for informational purposes. You can get around it easily. Of course, it will crash because Hyperion doesn't support Wine. |
They are not intentionally blocking Wine. Or at least, they used not to, but they added a message to let you know that Roblox won’t work well. Roblox’s anti-cheat detects Wine’s implementation of system libraries (and many other things) as modified, which they, in fact, are (or are completely new implementations of Windows libraries, which is even worse). This triggers the anti-cheat because many cheats will modify system libraries to alter the client’s behaviour or evade detection. What Roblox did to enhance compatibility with Wine was purposefully disable some aspects of the anti-cheat when Wine was detected. However, exploit developers started abusing this compatibility feature (e.g., make Roblox on Windows believe it’s running under Wine so you can freely alter system libraries and work around even more detections), so they had to remove it because the risks of letting this feature in and indirectly helping exploiters out exceeded the advantages of letting a relatively small part of the userbase play on Linux. To make Roblox work on Wine now, you need to reverse engineer and bypass a substantial part of the anti-cheat. This effort is so Herculean that there’s an entire market dedicated to this (exploits), with many people spending unspoken amounts of time working on these bypasses. If the FOSS community achieves this, you will have uprooted the exploiting market. |
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You can still play by setting forced_version to version-70a2467227df4077, but Roblox will eventually show the unsupported version error. |
That worked! ` forced_version = "version-70a2467227df4077" |
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when the version is inevitably depricated, virtual machines should work |
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Enjoyed playing while it lasted. It is the only game I played anymore, and just with my kids. So it was very convenient to just run it under my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed install. I think it ran better than the supported Windows client. It was so buttery smooth. Hopefully they target Steamdeck/Linux in the future. I don't really want to go back to dual booting Windows 11, or attempting to play in a Windows 11 VM. |
@jrelvas-ipc Can you post how to do skip the soft check? I'm guessing a setting or cmdline flag somewhere. I'm interested in tinkering with it, but I don't know much about Hyperion specifically. |
Thank you so much, however you are right this won't last for long and it will sure give the unsupported version error. I hope that vinegarhq can cook something up in that time period. |
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Welp I hope with things like the Steam Deck and Linux in general starting to get more popular that at some point their hands will be forced |
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aw man, now i have to do something productive instead of playing roblox all day |
What if you sha what winege or normal wine dlls are and acept those. |
This whitelist idea could probably be done in 5 minutes as a "hack". Just to allow some players and developers who rely on Linux to access Roblox happily. It was also a "hack" disabling most of the anti-tamper to run on Wine because of some developers who requested it. If a whitelist was done quickly in any volunteer Roblox employee's free time, it would satisfy developers, since Wine is being used to study the inner workings of Hyperion. It's an alternative. Maybe not the best. There's no need to call this hack "jank". |
We already have potential backdoors in Linux. It is called SELinux and it was made by the NSA. Users already have to add tainted kernel modules for nvidia cards. Hyperion is a user mode function. Hyperion is not an NT Level exploit to inject it's module into NT. |
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Sigh... Roblox can go eat a turd. There is NO way in hell I'm paying for multiple new Windows licenses just so the kids can play Roblox, and even if I ignore that part (either by telling them they just can't have a wallpaper or by finding some dodgy online place to buy a cheap license) there's absolutely no flipping way I'm going to add extra Windows installs into my life to look after. I just don't have the damn time. The one computer they use with Windows is already a steaming pile of bad updates and questionable "fun" software... I'm just not going there again. I guess I'll be saying something along these lines after school today.... |
All you get without a license now is a watermark (although there are several trusted marketplaces for working OEM keys that are cheap) and that is it. |
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You could also just crack it |
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God I hate Roblox hackers. According to a the verge article, Roblox hack developers used wine to reverse engineer Hyperion (one of roblox's anti cheats) to develop Roblox hacks, so Hyperion had to disable wine support. https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/1/24088114/roblox-linux-steam-deck-workarounds-wine-not-supported |
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This is not about money as you can install W10 and just ignore the activation window. Windows can be free in many ways, some legit, others don't. This is about principles. If Steam Deck is not a good enough reason for "Corporate Roblox" to bring a Linux client to the table, nothing else would convince them. There are no ways for Linux Desktop users to change this turn of events. I think the best way is to forget that Roblox exists. Move to other games. Lethal Company works very nicely, The Phasmophobia voice recognition works, Sons of the Forest is Gold in ProtonDB. If you are going back to Windows just because of Roblox, trust me, you are sending the wrong message. You are telling "Corporate Roblox" that you are down on your knees. Only one type of person is down to their knees, beggars. I am not one of those. |
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It's not even the principle for me... It's the time. Windows eats up time. From sitting and waiting for updates, to fixing the broken ones... And of course the trouble the users can get things into by running random junk off the internet. I simply don't have the time to be constantly figuring out what went wrong this time. And with Linux, I don't have to do that. |
As you said, "potentials". I do not doubt it. We live in a world full of "conspiracies", but it is better to continue with your Linux with this supposed "backdoor" than a closed source anticheat module loaded into the Kernel. If there is a backdoor in Linux, I have my doubts whether SELinux is one of them. Not everything the NSA does to increase the security of something is a backdoor. For the NVidia GPUs you mentioned, this would be a specific backdoor for those who need these modules because they have an NVidia GPU. My CPU and GPU are completely AMD. The bigger problem would probably go far beyond your operating system. If they wanted to put a backdoor, it would be in the firmware of these hardware. And also these closed source NVidia drivers and modules will probably be rendered useless by efforts to create open source drivers for NVidia hardware. I know that Hyperion, for now, is an anti-tamper that works in user mode. But, Bitdancer said in the Roblox DevForum that if things get nasty, MAYBE Hyperion will become a Kernel-level anti-cheat, something that Linux would be unlikely to adapt to with Wine, he said. |
Nah. Looking at the list of Roblox holders, there is no Microsoft there. I think you should worry more about Vanguard and Blackrock than Microsoft. Roblox Corporation is a company that has to please investors. They have to justify the expenses. The hard truth is that no one uses Linux on the desktop and cares the least about their privacy, and they continue to use Windows and MacOS. If the percentage of Roblox players on Linux were the same as on Windows, you can be sure that no financial incentive from Microsoft or Apple would prevent them from officially supporting Linux. It wouldn't even need to come close to Windows. Maybe 10% of the user base would be enough? |
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4 percent and rising percentage on the desktop (not to mention ChromeOS has Linux VM, and a real Roblox linux port would be better than Android) Also 2026 will be the true year of the Linux desktop with Windows 10 users moving over to Linux instead of using Windows 11 "system requirements" bypass. |
Where did you get that 4% percentage for Roblox? Voices in your head? There are no official statistics released by Roblox. |
you're going in my copypasta drawer |
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If roblox will ever make a linux port the primary target will be the steam deck, this will also benefit desktop users. A thing to note is even though the market share is 4% not all linux users are interested in roblox, especially compared to something like Windows or MacOS, this is most likely the reason why the roblox staff still can't justify a linux port |
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We can all pretend that Roblox can't justify something or it's because of another arbitrary reason or another like usage statistics but in reality, they just do not care and only a small portion of their employees make an effort to get their game working on Linux and the higher ups simply do not care. It is not difficult to have your game working under wine and I say that with game dev experience. They are just not interested in maintaining another version of their game and that's that. |
That's not why they did it though |
Their solution to the Linux compatibility was a half-baked one, disabling certain modules if wine is detected will leave you right open to exploits and bypasses. It's like opening your window and getting mad when a housefly flies in. They should have seen this coming and I'm sure they did but this was not a solution, they simply added was a workaround. Furthermore, It was not entirely bypassed, It was more so exploits being easier to run via Wine because, again, they basically disabled certain modules if they detected you were playing on wine. Purposefully adding a security vulnerability for the sake of compatibility will always lead to people exploiting said vulnerabilities, especially in a game like Roblox, a game notoriously known for having one of most toxic communities full of adolescent children and If they seriously thought this would work out this way forever, they are sorely mistaken. Now to be fair, Wine DOES make it easier to reverse engineer programs, but not by a whole lot, even if you're not a developer, you could see that a lot of games running on Wine would have at least some of their code leaked by now if this was the case or any online game that had linux compatibility would be rampant with cheaters but this is not the case, good implementation beats any excuse. They need to create a Linux module for hyperion like what EAC does for it to properly work so that exploiters can't take advantage of it and I am sure Roblox devs are very much aware of this. This is sadly the state of anticheats running under wine and proton at the moment and there is nothing we can expect from this project (vinegar) nor Roblox at the moment. We can only hope that Bitdancer is quietly cooking a Hyperion/Byfron Linux module in the background... |
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I genuinely don't know what point you're tryna make |
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I am not making a point, I am just informing OP. |
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I would rather have exploiters than not havimg a windows only anti cheat. |
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IMO they should just re-enable Wine and let the Linux players only play with each other. Maybe a bit pointless but that'd still be better than nothing. And maybe that wouldn't involve that much effort to pull off on their end. |
Wouldn't it be possible to force the Android version to run on something like a Raspberry Pi similarly to how MCPE Launcher does things? (It downloads x86_64 version of Android version of MC Bedrock from Google's servers and does some magic to it) |
Ah yes defeat the entire point great ideas guys |
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Hyperion is a failed anti cheat and is not effective and has been bypassed anyway. I still see exploiters in games so there is no reason for still it without it being changed fully. |
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First, its not an anti cheat.
Its an anti tamper.
Second, "for security reasons" not valid. I have android 14 and I have root
access. Sorry, not a valid argument
…On Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 11:26 PM account183892 ***@***.***> wrote:
Hyperion is a failed anti cheat and is not effective and has been bypassed
anyway. I still see exploiters in games so there is no reason for still it
without it being changed fully.
The problem with using Android version is that it is the least optimized,
non FPS unlockable (along with iOS) client of ROBLOX.
If ROBLOX wants to do an anti cheat that works they would have took the
plunge and do NT modules and develop kexts for MacOS and on Android they
ban Android 11 and below "for security purposes" and lose all the people
that play on the Fire tablets, the most profitable Android device for
Roblox.
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Going to lock this issue, if you'd like to continue this discussion further, please do so on the Discord. |
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