Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege is an endlessly entertaining multiplayer game, but it’s currently unplayable on Valve’s Steam Deck.
While the majority of Windows games, even multiplayer games, are playable on Valve’s handheld, Rainbow Six Siege can’t be played on the system due to its kernel-level anti-cheat software.
Speaking to FRVR, anti-cheat director Matthieu Sola explained that there are no plans to bring Rainbow Six Siege to the Steam Deck, likely due to the game’s prominent use of anti-cheat.
“We do not plan to port R6S to the Steam Deck,” the developer succinctly told us.
As for the anti-cheat discussion, Sola explained that Ubisoft is continuing to invest in its technology to stomp out the rampant cheaters in Siege. Rainbow Six Siege has always struggled in the fight against cheaters, but Sola explains that the team is working to make it more costly for anyone who wishes to ruin the online experience.
“While we can’t change cheaters, we can make cheating increasingly difficult, risky, and unrewarding through layered defenses,” the developer said. “Our strategy focuses on making cheats difficult and costly to make, detecting both technical exploits and suspicious behavior patterns, then responding as soon as possible when cheat makers have adapted.”
While Valve hopes that the popularity of Steam Deck and the upcoming Steam Machine will cause developers to develop Linux-based anti-cheats, some titles simply won’t be going down that path.
As Sola explains, “the best anti-cheat is one that honest players don ’t think about because it runs quietly in the background and still protects fair play effectively.” Unfortunately, despite the fact that video games simply aren’t that deep, there are a lot of dishonest players out there, and they can ruin the experience for everyone.
Nevertheless, Ubisoft as a whole is keen to continue supporting Steam Deck in the future. The studio’s impressive Assassin’s Creed Shadows port to Nintendo Switch 2 largely exists due to the team targeting Valve’s handheld for launch, and future games will be playable on the system. For fans of Siege, though, that day may never come.
Of course, with all that said, technically Siege is still playable on the handheld… albeit via Windows, and who wants to do that to their beautiful SteamOS device?
