Roblox appears to be testing a brand new 64-bit client with Byfron implemented, a few users have been granted access to this client in what looks like an A/B test.
Unfortunately, Byfron has an option to prevent the program from running if it’s in Wine enabled by default, and Roblox’s engineers forgot to disable it, preventing all Linux users that are part of this A/B test from running Roblox at all, even if there’s no compatibility issue whatsoever with Wine.
Roblox should not block Wine due to “compatibility issues”; Wine is constantly improving and fixing compatibility issues with programs. Even if Wine cannot run Byfron Roblox today, it might be able to one day.
Reproduction steps are extremely simple:
Install Roblox under a wineprefix. Any Wine version, including the latest one, has this issue.
Make sure the new x64 client is installed. If you’re not part of the A/B test, you can install the new client anyways by using the following link: roblox-player:1+launchmode:app+channel:zwinplayer64 - as soon as accessed, the new client will be installed automatically.
Attempt to run Roblox. This will result in a window appearing, informing the user that “Wine is not supported”. Shortly after, the launcher will automatically close.
Currently, the only workaround to this issue is to force the installation of the old 32-bit client, which doesn’t have Byfron. You can do that by using the following link: roblox-player:1+launchmode:app+channel:zlive.
Of course, once this new client officially releases, the old 32-bit one will no longer be available, rendering this workaround useless. If that happens and this issue isn’t fixed, Linux users will no longer be able to use Roblox unless they attempt to run Windows under a VM, which is only possible at reasonable performance levels for certain kinds of hardware and configurations.
Hello Jrelvas, Unfortunately this block was intentional. With the Windows 64-bit client launch we made the conscious decision to block the use of Wine. We came to this decision due to a combination of security and compatibility concerns. As a Linux user I am sure you understand the challenges of the Windows ecosystem. Wine is not officially supported but we are committed to working towards compatibility where possible. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a specific timeline for this support. However, I assure you that it remains a priority for our team.
Thank you for your reply and acknowledging the issue, however, the lack of communication here left me baffled and frustrated. Had this report not been made, the Linux community would most likely only find out that Linux support would be going away for the foreseeable future after this change was pushed out for everyone.
I understand that Roblox doesn’t officially support Wine or the Linux desktop, but I believe that a heads up for Wine users was (and still is) reasonable, to avoid as much disruption as possible (especially for the developer community!)
Please warn Wine users that their method of playing Roblox will soon no longer be supported for the foreseeable future, just like how you’ve warned users that are still running Roblox on 32-bit machines.
As for Roblox Studio, does Roblox have any plans to prevent its use on Wine as well? Or will this just be a client policy for the foreseeable future? Linux users still have the (possible) option to run the client through Waydroid (similar to Wine, but for android apps instead), but restricting wine on studio as well would be even more impactful, as wine is the only reasonable way of running Roblox Studio without diving into virtualization.
I’m sad to hear these news, and all I can say is that I hope Roblox is capable of improving the user experience for the Linux desktop eventually.
Thank you for confirming. This is about what I expected would be the reasoning. It’s understandable, since I’m assuming that the new anticheat does some weird stuff that as a byproduct, Wine is just unable to handle whatever it does. The point can be made that you guys just didn’t really bother to find a way to make it work, but with how many other anticheat solutions that also seem to go down this route too, I guess complications like this are just to be expected at this point. Oh well.
Though, it’s disappointing that this is the ultimate outcome given we were mostly assured into expecting this to be smooth and painless, with Hyperion previously boasting Linux support and some of the devs being known as Linux/Wine enthusiasts. It’s why I was so surprised to see this update being released now, knowing that Wine compatibility was already broken prior to release.
Defocusing from Wine for a moment, I do agree on the sentiment that a change as major and breaking as this should’ve been communicated beforehand, given how many communities it disrupts, not just the Roblox on Wine userbase (e.g. ReShade).
Edit: I guess I didn’t really communicate myself very well, whoops. I might be a bit biased on this since I sort of specialize in client modding, but whatever. Yes, Roblox does not encourage modding the game client (most of the time), but they do have very large user bases where a lot of legitimate people are impacted by this update. They don’t have to encourage modding to say that mods like these are going to break. Even the largest one that Roblox does officially endorse, rbxfpsunlocker, didn’t get any heads up, and Roblox still provides no easy built-in way to do what it does.
Edit 2: Cleared up my thoughts and made them more coherent to make myself seem less of an apologist, lol
I joined ROBLOX back in 2007, and if something like this were to have happened back then, I’m almost certain you would have notified everyone, made a blog post, etc etc, but as you have become super corporate, (in my opinion) you have developed terrible communication skills in relations to anything that isn’t product announcements, or corporate marketing.
The lack of in-advanced communication of your plans to block Wine is, in my honest opinion, DISGUSTING and DISAPPOINTING, I’d expect better from ROBLOX.
Please ensure this lack of communication is worked on, and perhaps developing some kind of forum section for Linux users would solve this.
I also agree but I also can see them not doing so because they’re not officially supported and Roblox doesn’t necessarily want us to manipulate the client (like ReShade does).
Honestly tho, more excited to see a possibility for linux support in the future. The Steam Deck would do wonders for the platform.
Yea but it still doesn’t mean that it’s officially endorsed like the FPS Unlocker is. AFAIK, Roblox’s official stance essentially boils down to “too few people use it for us to care”.
To make it clear, Wine by itself does not modify Roblox in any shape or form, it just translate its language so the linux kernel can understand it.
I wonder what security issues Roblox discovered while assessing Wine’s fate. It’s not really common for exploiters and bad actors to use linux to exploit unless it’s for botting purposes (And even then, that’s usually just the case for games with native linux ports). Is there something Wine relies in particular that leaves a major security gap?
I can’t say I am surprised about this move, but I am really sad about it. Roblox and SteamVR have been the only things stopping me from moving onto Linux. I just completed my VR system and planned to move onto Linux now to be completely stopped by this update. For my professional workflow with server applications, Windows sucks. Now you have me picking between making my server application development workflow suck or making my Roblox workflow really suck. In addition, this eliminates the Steam Deck userbase.
I get it that there are concerns about WINE, similar to how other games block it, but why block it outright? You are begging the Linux users to bypass it or go out and create virtual machines with hardware passthrough which is not immune from the host OS changing the memory. We’ve had Roblox working but not supported for years. Now we can’t know if it would or wouldn’t work without risking account termination.
I have my doubts this future is anywhere close. The plugin marketplace has been promising pay-what-you-want options nearly every quarter for the past 3 years. In my eyes, Linux support isn’t worth hoping for. You’ll be waiting a very long time.
I should mention that the Roblox player isn’t just blocked from running, it doesn’t run whatsoever and just crashes. The launcher shows the notice because of that. I’m assuming that it crashes because of what Hyperion tries to do just isn’t supported in Wine, and not intentionally because Wine is being detected, unless someone can say otherwise.
It’s sad because the people behind Byfron cares a lot about the Linux ecosystem. Especially how a key member of Byfrons team also heavily contributed to Wine itself.
I guess I won’t be able to play anymore I suppose. Fun while it lasted??
Considering a Roblox client exists for Unix based OS like Mac and Android, and Vulkan support on Android already, I’m curious what is blocking support for an official Linux client
I know this might sound ridiculous but how about retrying to make Roblox native on Linux? As I know It’s been a long time since the last attempt (I might be wrong). But I think it still won’t be that simple since Roblox uses WinAPI (and the new anti-cheat).
Of course restoring the Wine support is a higher prior right now.
I don’t understand why a more intrusive anti-cheat is the preferred option instead of educating developers on making proper, server-authorative games? Are there not enough articles about making your games secure on the developer forum? Feels like a super backwards move towards developer workflows.
I have no statistics, but I’d still guess majority of the exploiters will buy their exploits from someone who has the knowledge to disable these client-side changes - much like criminals don’t need to obey the law, because they’re going around it all anyway?
I usually just lurk around this place, but this move feels rather silly (as a Linux user…) so I had to speak out.
Edit: Studio is not affected at the time of writing, but at the same time… playtesting with an actual client on Linux is out of the question with this I guess.
I just don’t understand, why block now when it’s unsupported instead of blocking Wine when it’s natively supported, gives more incentive to move.
I wonder if the original people behind Byfron had a say in this or they left entirely when they got bought by Roblox, this is something they wouldn’t do.
The era of Roblox “natively” running on Linux may be over, but the era of Roblox running on Linux isn’t. I’m going to drop off two little tools called Looking Glass and tiny11builder. Although not for all cases, if you’ve moved over to Linux, you’re bound to have about 6GBs worth of RAM to spare to a VM.
The only way to get Roblox to officially support at this point is to prove it is still desired no matter what they do to stop it. Considering we’ve broken through the previous block which lasted for years (all over a single line change for a WINE feature implemented over 2 years ago at that point), it won’t be long before it’s up and running again if the community is dedicated enough to the cause.
We still shouldn’t need to do this, also, you will have to do a GPU-passthrough if you want any performance at all.
GPU-passthroughs are hard to do with a single GPU, and just causes more system instability than stability, you would have to get a secondary GPU.
