Destiny 2 Steam Deck players face bans, says Bungie

It’s bad news for fans of newly released portable games systems and MMO shooters – Destiny 2 doesn’t work on Steam Deck. 

Developer Bungie released a statement making clear that the game is not supported on Valve’s new handheld gaming PC, which released on Feb. 25. 

Players who do launch the game through the Steam Deck’s native Steam OS will be abruptly returned to their games library shortly afterward. The same goes for any system using Valve’s Proton compatibility layer for Linux.

Anyone trying to bypass this compatibility check will be “met with a ban”, says Bungie. 

The develop itself doesn’t go into more detail about why this is, but if you’ll join us in speculation corner over here, some players think it’s about Destiny 2’s anti-cheat software.

The game requires Windows-based systems to run on PC. Windows is a closed OS, and has a crypto layer that checks the system’s booted in a non-user modified, Secure Mode state. The same isn’t true of SteamOS, which uses Linux’s Proton layer to achieve compatibility with Steam games. 

So the prevailing theory is that Bungie is protecting Destiny 2’s security ecosystem by sticking with Windows-only support and keeping out the auto-aimers. 

It’s the first major compatibility issue we’ve seen with Steam Deck since release, but it does have wider implications for multiplayer titles where anti-cheat is a big priority. 

Written by Phil Iwaniuk on behalf of GLHF.