Easy Anti-Cheat is coming to Rocket League, but Psyonix promises not to get all Fortnite with it and hose your Steam Deck and Linux installs

An orange Rocket League car with flaming horns on the top. — (Image credit: Psyonix)

It's 11 years old and Rocket League has decided it's had it up to here with cheating. In a post (actually an "article," which I guess the everything app has now) on X, the game's official account announced that, come April, Rocket League will be implementing Easy Anti-Cheat.

"Adding Easy Anti-Cheat elevates our ability to detect and ban cheaters in real time, and is part of a broader effort that includes additional bot detection methods, and DDoS attack prevention," said Psyonix.

This will, alas, bust any mods you're using, but as with other EAC-using games like Halo: The Master Chief Collection, you'll at least have an option to turn the tech off, though that will kill your ability to queue for online matches, private matches, and tournaments. "When Easy Anti-Cheat is turned off, you can run mods while playing offline matches, training, LAN matches, and viewing Replays while using custom video editing tools," said Psyonix.

"Community content like Steam Workshop maps is playable with or without Easy Anti-Cheat enabled, but you’ll want it off if you run mods on top of the content."

Specific mods, like the kind used in Rocket League tournaments to aid spectation, will also be able to be used by specific accounts (you can't apply, though—Psyonix will offer the ability to "specific partners" according to its own metrics).

Finally, and honestly, here's the part that most matters to me: the devs promise not to absolutely hose your Steam Deck and Linux installs of Rocket League. That shouldn't be a surprise—Easy Anti-Cheat is used by plenty of games that get the green light on Are We Anticheat Yet?—but Psyonix is owned by Epic, and Epic uses EAC for Fortnite which, infamously, will not work on your Deck. But Psyonix says "we know some of you love to play on Steam Deck and on Linux operating systems through apps like Proton, and this will still be supported with Easy Anti-Cheat on."

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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