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
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If I remember correctly they said that they don’t support it but it’s something they keep in mind.
Looks like I will be staying on Windows for the foreseeable future then.
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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.
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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.
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Market share, linux is such a small small minority of users that its not worth the time or effort in order to support maybe ten thousand or so users.
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I’m sure this has been promised a lot of in the past and mentioned by Roblox engineers, although it might be a possibility: Proper support for the Linux platform - #61 by TheNexusAvenger
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.
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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.
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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.
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Don’t disagree, but shouldn’t doesn’t mean you cannot. Roblox, although it has certainly gotten more, is not a very demanding platform. An older AMD GPU for about $200 off eBay should be more than sufficient to play the majority of Roblox games. EDIT: Apparently you can get a Nvidia 1080 IT for around $200 off eBay if you’re willing to shop around a bit. Crazy …
The whole point of the information is to show Roblox there is a demand for Linux, and even if they block it natively, solutions will still be found to use it on our preferred OS. All tools should be used when appropriate.
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It’s kind of unfortunate and honesty disheartening that Wine is blocked purposefully. It’s totally understandable that this would happen accidentally and that fixing such bugs is not necessary.
But purposefully blocking it means that effort was used to block Linux which.
Wasted effort that could have been used for something much more important.
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We shouldn’t, you’re right. But at the moment, VM with passthrough and Waydroid appear to be the only options to keep using Roblox without installing Windows.
However, I will make it clear to Roblox that the day I’m no longer able to use Roblox on Linux in any shape or form is the day I ditch this platform for as long as it’s not possible.
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Cannot argue with that, this will still drive some users and creators away from Roblox, I know a developer at Quantum Science that uses Linux but I’m sure that they duel-boot now.
Although it won’t cause a huge, massive disruption in the Roblox community, it will still slow communities down that rely on Linux, also some people cannot afford a Windows license key or do not want to cough up that type of money for good old Billy gates and see Linux as a open-source solution that they can freely use.
Not to mention how much money Valve has poured into the Linux industry, trying to fund and pay open-source software developers to help make games run better on Linux or even reach out to game development companies to help get their game verified on Deck! This has very much improved the Linux market share statistic.
To me, it seems like game companies are scared of Linux because it’s unmarked territory, something very alien to them, they won’t decide to support Linux until other companies do or if there is community pressure. There is no doubt a high demand for games to support Linux, which is evidence by Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege as on the now closed-down forums, there was a post that was probably the most active thread on the entire forums talking about Linux support and that it would be easy for them to just allow Linux as it uses BattlEye (Which has native support)
Currently on the Ubisoft Discord server, “Linux/Steam Deck Support for Rainbow Six: Siege” is the most upvoted thread on #game-feedback.
I wonder if Studio is affected by the ban or not, I’m not sure why you would require Byfron for Studio, unless it’s apart of the bootstrapper.
Although, I hope Roblox will pick Linux back up from the floor, I had given up for Roblox’s VR support because of how awful it was, specifically for new headsets like the Valve Index, but suddenly Roblox finally gave VR support some much needed T.L.C. We can only hope that Roblox will do the same in the future. 
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Thank you for the confirmation and the reply! I know there are a lot of questions and concerns piling up, and I appreciate any time you might spend answering the many questions coming from the users playing on Linux.
I would appreciate clarification on whether or not Roblox/byfron intend to simply prevent users from using Wine, or if they intend to punish the use of Wine in order to maintain control.
I am concerned about this, because I have been developing and playing Roblox on Linux for three years, so, as a result of this change, I will need to invest into hardware for virtualization. I understand that this is not something that most people can easily do, especially because it isn’t very accessible, so many users will be forced to dual boot. This is cheaper but still really inconvenient, requires an extra drive, and can put a hit on the engine’s performance for them, on top of being very disruptive for people’s workflows. If you have ever tried more than one OS, that is the pain of dual booting but every day. Except, it’s even more time consuming and frustrating hahaha… All the screenshotting software is different, different hotkeys, graphical environments, troubleshooting, drivers, interface, etc, etc, it may take multiple minutes to reboot switch in order to obtain files or information you forgot, and you are then forced to lose your IDE states, and your studio states, etc because you have to shut everything down. On lower end PCs, which are going to be the ones dual booting, startup may add a lot of overhead and therefore a lot of performance impacts that last until a lot of the software on user’s PCs has finished loading or starting, including Windows OS related things.
A lot of these drawbacks can be mitigated from virtualization by having that more familiar host on top for purposes other than just Roblox, but that requires having an extra GPU, extra storage space, and more powerful hardware for being able to support the overhead of a virtual machine.
If Linux users can still play at the risk of being banned, this may be worth it for some people, if Byfron is stable enough to not result in “false” detections due to incompatibilities or inconsistencies in Wine’s environment.
A statement about Linux+Cheating
This is a bit of an opinionated rant but I have a lot of things that I think need to be said, and, I would appreciate if these arguments could also be considered by Roblox, but I also understand why they may not. I and many others will appreciate smaller acknowledgement or clarification, e.g. of the above, or anything else, even if it doesn’t align with our interests. (Sorry for hanging on this little intro bit as much as I am but I just want to make it really clear what my intents with my message actually are)
I believe that Roblox already understands a lot of these concerns, and I do not expect support from Roblox at all, especially not any time soon, so, I intend for all of these things to just provide an open justification for why Roblox on Linux is safe against cheating, even if it is not entirely relevant at the moment.
I have no decisions from Roblox to argue against here, except that Wine will be blocked in some capacity, which, I believe is already relatively understandable, and, hope but do not expect to eventually see reversed in the future.
Cheating fundamentally isn’t compatible with Linux or Wine in more ways than just software
No modern Roblox exploit to my knowledge runs under Wine due to it lacking almost all support for any of the features used by Roblox exploits. Getting an exploit to run under Wine would be inherently more difficult than Windows for the same reason that getting Roblox to run under Wine is, but even more so due to the inherently more unsafe features that they rely on. Roblox has the benefit of not depending on said features, being memory safe and self-contained, etc (and therefore predictable). Exploits don’t completely have that benefit, and Wine is unlikely to properly support the behaviours that exploits perform since they are not part of Wine’s main intents (the kinds of things exploits do aren’t common in software!), and I think that fact is often missed.
That costs them a lot of time to potentially try and support, just like Roblox would have to invest into proper support for Linux, except the general population is against cheating under Wine or on Linux, because everyone just wants to be able to play and use Roblox. To create content on Roblox, and to enjoy content on Roblox.
Wine is not cheating software, the goal of Wine is to provide a compatibility layer for Windows software and games, and, I think that many of these bigger anti-cheat groups only prevent wine out of caution, and perhaps to protect users from detections that arise from incompatibilities. As Wine grows, these incompatibilities lessen, but, the ways in which Wine grows tend not to positively impact cheating software as much as it does the general population of other programs (it may even negatively impact cheating software).
Another important note, is that cheating software would be incentivized to employ its own Wine detections, because unlike on a Windows environment, it is difficult for them to maintain strict access to their paid tools. Exploits actually have even more incentive to make themselves incompatible with Wine than anti-cheat software does, because Wine makes it easier for people to essentially pirate these exploit softwares that try to implement whitelisting.
The distinction between other software here is that other software doesn’t tend to employ the same kinds of restrictions that cheat software does, they aren’t trying to maintain a monopoly or maintain control alongside a sibling/host software. The whole thing that makes cheat software valuable in the first place is the fact that other cheaper alternatives don’t exist, they are purely informational/algorithmic, can’t really be patented as a result afaik, are therefore are often secretive as they do not want their methods to be public and get fixed or re-used by competitors. They depend strictly on their ability to maintain control over cheating in Roblox to be profitable, and thus, unlike with something like Byfron, cheating software has really strong incentive to make it hard for people to use it under Wine (and they don’t need to care about being invasive in this regard) where their control and ability to detect your specific device will be more limited.
I believe it is also important to note, that wrapper software like Grapejuice which make it possible for the general population of non-technical Linux users don’t condone cheating either, and, it is obviously also in their best interest to prevent cheating in order to maintain a good reputation with Roblox and keep some ability to use Roblox on Linux available for those who want (or depend on) it.
Conclusion
For all these reasons, I would make a very strong prediction that cheating softwares, especially for Roblox, will always strongly prefer to stay on Windows and not move to Wine or Linux, even if Roblox were to hypothetically provide Linux binaries for Roblox. It’s cheaper, and easier, their whole target audience is on Windows, and Windows helps them maintain control over their monopoly in competitive and invasive ways that they could not under Wine that Roblox, even with Byfron.
Summary
- Exploits will have a hard time supporting Wine, meanwhile Roblox doesn’t need to because Linux+Roblox users will do this for them
- The large majority of Linux+Roblox users would not appreciate cheating on Wine or Linux
- Exploits rely on very strict monopoly-like control over their cheating space to be profitable, and they rely on the host software, Roblox to be easily “cheatable” in the first place. Since almost all of their paying users would be on Windows, it doesn’t make sense for them to try to open up the door for cheating on Linux when the time & monetary investment may already be significant enough to defeat Byfron to begin with to eat up a lot of their capacity for that, assuming that it is effective anti-cheat software. Lots of Linux users would shun exploiters anyways, as, well, this does exactly what nobody wants, and gives incentive for Roblox/Byfron to shut out Wine/Linux users.
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Hello Hexcede,
Thank you for your well thought out post. First and most importantly, we are not trying to punish the use of Wine.
Our Windows 64-bit client is in some regards quite different from the 32-bit client. We are currently gathering telemetry to analyze and hopefully fix existing issues and prevent future ones from popping up. For this process to work, it is of utmost importance to collect data from the indented target operating system. You will also find that we blocked the usage of VMs for the very same reason.
I hope this clarifies some of the thought process behind the blocking of Wine. As MrEaker mentioned before, Wine remains a priority for our team, and we are certainly not deaf to the voices of our community.
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I hope this means you see the value in not blocking wine. The only telemetry I’m able to provide is the failure to launch studio.
What is your recommended workaround in the meantime if you don’t intend people to use wine or a VM? Since I can’t meaningfully contribute to your A/B test, it would be good if I can at least continue development.
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Thank you, I appreciate your time a lot, and I appreciate the response!
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Only RobloxPlayerBeta.exe actively blocks Wine.
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Can we take this as a confirmation Roblox is not planning on (actively) preventing Roblox Studio from running on Wine for the foreseeable future? It’s hard to take anything that is currently true for granted considering the fact this change was unexpectedly introduced.
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Thank you for the transparency! This cleared up a lot of details for me.
From what I’m gathering, you are blocking Virtual Machines and compatibility tools like Proton and Wine for analysing telemetry data on how well the new client is performing, would this mean the block is temporary until there is enough data to go off of? Roblox’s user-base is huge, so I’m sure it wouldn’t take that long.
And if not, would be viable to exclude and block telemetry from clients that are being ran under a compatibility layer or virtualisation software?
I’m also super happy that Studio will not block Wine
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I can confirm that currently there is no code in Studio that actively prevents Wine. Also, to my knowledge there are no plans to have any Wine blocking code added to Studio.
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