With Valve's great work on the LinuxProton tool, along with the Game Porting Kit and CrossOver options for Mac, there are very few games these days that are truly "Windows only." The exceptions are those games that have aggressive Windows-based anti-cheat tools built into them, which is a big blow to players eager to get their hands on the new superhero shooter.

Marvel Confronted, a free-to-play Overwatch-style hero shooter launching in early December 2024, has all the typical elements of an MMO: a game store with skins and customizations, a battle pass, and anti-cheating technology. Proton powers the Linux-based SteamDeck, making it capable of playing almost any Windows game. While Proton has come a long way in a few years, its biggest blind spot has been online games like Grand Theft Auto Online, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Apex Legends, and more. The same goes for Mac players, who can often run Windows games in CrossOver or Parallels without using any anti-cheat tools if they are DirectX12 compatible.As detailed in the r/macgaming subreddit and atr/SteamDeck, many players who successfully obtained Marvel Contest received a "PenaltyIssued" notification, a "detected" violation, and were unable to play the game until 2124.
While Marvel Contest was quick to issue the ban, it was also quick to address the issue. According to a company statement and Reddit post, the ban has been lifted after the player contacted Marvel Contest's leadership, as well as direct intervention from the CEO of CrossOver developer CodeWeavers. Developer NetEase posted on its Discord that the company "will not ban players who play fair games and do not cheat" and will work to improve the accuracy of anti-cheating detection. The company has not made any broader statement about allowing the use of compatible tools.It can seem like a tricky challenge for developers to maintain a cheat-free online game while taking into account all the quirks of the various compatibility tiers. With more SteamOS-based devices seemingly on the way, it seems game developers will have to decide how much compatibility they want to incorporate into their communities.