"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.
But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."
Highest rated != most played or most popular.
COD MP.
Warzone.
Fortnite.
GTA Online.
Not on Linux.
Most Call of Duty games work on linux, you’re gonna have to be more specific as to which particular one of like 25 you mean by ‘COD’.
The ones that don’t, they don’t work because the devs are too lazy or incompetent (or specifically told not to by their bosses) to make an AntiCheat that isn’t a rootkit with full access to your entire PC.
I used to play GTA V Online (and RDR2, and FiveM, and RedM…) on linux all the time, literally for years… untill they just decided to ban all linux players.
IMO they owe me money for that, but oh well I guess.
…
Again, there are many AntiCheats that work on linux, and have worked on linux for years and years now.
Easy Anti Cheat and Battleeye even offer linux support to game devs. There are some games with these ACs that actually do support linux.
But many game devs/studios/publishers just don’t use this support… because then there wouldn’t be any reason to actually use Windows, and MSFT pays these studios a lot of money… or they just literally own them (Activision/Blizzard = MSFT).
Kernel Anti Cheat that only works on Windows?
Yep, that’s just a complicated way to enforce Windows exclusivity in PC games.
Go look up how many hacks and trainers you can find for one of these games you mention.
You may notice that they are all designed for, and only work on… Windows.
The idea that all linux gamers are malicious hackers is a laughable, obviously false idea… but game company execs understand the power of rabid irrational fandoms.
…
You are right that you can’t run games with rootkit anticheats on linux though, so if those heavily monetized and manipulative games with toxic playerbases are your addiction of choice, yep, sorry, linux ain’t your hookup for those.
Again, this is another game platform freedom advocacy issue, and also a personal information security advocacy issue, not a ‘something is wrong with linux’ issue.
Game companies have gotten many working anticheat systems to work with linux. The most popular third party anticheat systems also support linux.
But the industry is clever at keeping people locked into their for profit, insecure OSs that spy on their entire system.