Tim Sweeney Kills VFIO for Gaming? EAC Unbpassable Via Config Tweaks as of 03/13/2026

Operating Systems & Open Source Virtualization
1

Well it finally happened the 1 thing that needed to run on my PC uses EAC and got the latest version. I’ve been trying to raise awareness about my 1 thing which is VRChat since Janurary when the workarround was to disable hypervisor as I knew they were starting to crack down, but the devs/staff seem to not actually care to read their issue tracker are are focusing their efforts on whitelisting ShadowPC’s vms only.

Does anyone thing EAC will relapse on these changes, or is this the kiss of death for VFIO gaming for most people?

Canny post I made regarding the issue on vrchat’s issue tracker: EAC Blocks VMs Conflicting With VRChat's Statements Not Caring If People Use VMs | Voters | VRChat
My various bitchings on reddit: LustyFoxx1984 comments on VRChat Now Explicitly Blocks VMs in their EAC version Unless You Hinder Performance By Disabling The Hypervisor Extension
Did EAC push more VM detection? : VFIO

2

I think you have a slight misconception in what EAC is or does.

EAC fundamentally is only a toolkit. It provides tools for various detections to game developers. What tools in that box are being used is up to the individual developers, not EAC.

Put another way: If $thing is being detected, it means developers actively chose to detect $thing. Whether or not you agree with that decision is of course up to you, and petitioning to change their mind is possible, but at the end of the day the only vote that counts is your wallet.
If you’re spending money on a product you disagree with, the company does not (need to) care that you do, because they got their money.

With that being said, as far as I know VRChat has been running just fine via Proton for years, which would indicate they have whitelisted the Linux EAC runtime (yet another tool in the box).

ProtonDB also still lists the game as Gold with the last review as of a week ago:
https://www.protondb.com/app/438100

Which begs the question, why bother with a VM in the first place?

2 Likes
3

Oops the OP post has multiple issues I didn’t know I wouldn’t be able to edit and touch it up due to the approval process, noting major just some typos, and I directly linked to some guy saying to do a lawsuit lol

EAC fundamentally is only a toolkit. It provides tools for various detections to game developers. What tools in that box are being used is up to the individual developers, not EAC.

The free version doesn’t let developers make config changes as far as I am aware, VMs being blocked is a part of that. Even if one has the paid version which according to my direct confrontation with a staff, it does, the default configuration may not be changed due not having any reason to doubt the defaults.

Put another way: If $thing is being detected, it means developers actively chose to detect $thing.

In the case of VRChat they allow/permit/don’t care that you use VMs as they have an official doc page on it (wrong as of now obviously)

petitioning to change their mind is possible

It’s not a mind change it’s explaining how the system works and it’s seemingly downright impossible lol. I’ve even brought it up directly to their main staff member and it was clear they had multiple misunderstandings about the situation.

but at the end of the day the only vote that counts is your wallet.

long since tried alternative platforms and advocated for them at times, my friend group is among many eagerly awaiting an alternative platform that has a chance at replacing VRC, never spent a dime and chastised those that have

Which begs the question, why bother with a VM in the first place?

hardware that only works on windows, and performance demands that make me not desire to use linux as DXVK has a lot of overhead and is no where near as stable as native dx11

1 Like
4

More and more anti-cheat and game developers, blocking Linux users from being able to play online. Personally, I simply boycott such games/companies, and although I am using a VM to play certain games, if they block me, I will simply play something else. That happened for example with Battlefield, where I am considered “veteran user”, playing online since BF1942, having my own server/community, and now, BF6 just decided to block me, with no actual reason whatsoever. And not only BF6, but they implemented changes to games I already own (BF1, BF2042), and changed T&C after I bought them. If I have a shitload of money to sue them, I would do, but I don’t

I simply play other games, which turn out to be much better, and avoid giving my hard earned money to companies that accuse me of cheating without any proof, because they are incompetent to make a proper anti-cheat system.

2 Likes
5

The fact there’s documentation on how to make it easier for VMs on the VRChat wiki and now an upstream change means stuff doesn’t work puts more importance on the Steam Frame saving us… Unfortunately video textures are STILL a problem in big worlds like Furality using Proton.

When you are vending a artist’s hall and all your video textures are blank, that’s a MAJOR issue that is not seeing any closer to resolution.

When a dance uses video textures to map to lighting, and it’s broken, what’s the point of the dance?

8

Yep, not only that but they there’s dozens of already open VM related issues on their tracker some with thousands of upvotes and marked as TRACKED. They just closed them and said VRChat itself doesn’t block, but even back then ignored that smbios spoofing was required which many non-open VM solutions (vmware, hyperv, parallels) don’t provide easily. Not to mention they are blaming shadowpc for doing something wrong on their end when it’s clearly in vrchat’s hands and merging some of these tickets into the main shadowpc issue where they are mostly discussing whitelisting….

I wouldn’t hold my breath on the steam frame making anything better, they’ll prob just have the game hit 90fps in the home world and get the badge just like they did for steam deck verification.

The entire platform is hellbent on turning a profit after running at a loss for 10 years and it shows, unless doing any action directly turns to $$$ they don’t care. Case in point issues relating to the prop/accessory system are promptly looked at and fixed with little community interaction, when they still have not made it clear if users will ever actually be able to make them themself.

9

So this affected me back in March-ish, with the original change apparently first rolling out in December of 2025. I was able to get “some” less strict EAC games working using a patch for qemu found here.

Applied that to the PKGBUILD for arch’s qemu to make my own modified package. However it meant keeping me down on 10.2.2, and only helped with some of the library of EAC protected games. While I was later able to also get patches found in the forked project.

Applied to the newer 11 build of qemu. I’ve not been successful in any other smbios tweaks or patches to get around EAC.

I’m posting here to hopefully help others and reinvigorate work in getting around Epic’s annoying anticheat, without just breaking it.

As a side note. The only thing I haven’t tried, because I can’t get it to load properly. Is changing the UEFI/OVMF firmware to the one provided in the second github’s deb package. So unsure if an EFI patch of some sort could actually help, but possibly.

10

And I find it interesting, that the major mmos which are the embodiment of service games continue to work fine on vfio VMs and Proton (World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2) or even Warframe/Soulframe, Diablo IV.

Honestly I couldn’t get VRChat running on a vfio VM at all, with or without spoofing.

11

Good “anti-tampering” is built into an engine, not strapped to the side and run in kernel space. VRChat being a social platform needing EAC I still don’t understand, but that’s its own issue. More so what the original poster said holding true, that Epic, the makers/managers of EAC just doing a blanket ban of all virtual machines, is stupid, very narrow sighted, and for people like me who value security. Very, very, annoying, since a lot of games I used to enjoy, have now become gimped in one form or another.

2 Likes
12

I see companies making big fuss about how good their anti-cheat is, but they are unable to make a “smart” anti-cheat that captures patterns and behaviours, rather than software running.
Incompetence at its best, from corporations that make billions.
Even Team17 who advertises “smart” anti-cheat for their game (Wardogs), does not block VMs, however, their anti-cheat drivers do not load under a VM, so it is pretty much the same result.

13

Speaking of Wardogs, yeah. It doesn’t work for me either. Just spikes CPU usage on the VM to 100% for a few seconds after getting past the initial splash screen. Then after those few seconds of overloading the VM it causes a crash/restart. I’ve not been able to get a good procmon log from it, but also not really to worried either. After doing some research even people running native windows experience a similar issue and it’s semi-random for them. So I can only assume my particular issue is one that needs to be fixed by the devs.

1 Like
14

The varying results regarding EAC/VM detection are precisely the problem a blanket statement like “EAC doesn’t work in VMs” eventually ceases to be helpful, as it depends on the specific game and configuration. That is why I am systematically collecting such concrete results on VMDB. If you test Wardogs or other affected games, your findings would be extremely valuable there.

15

The VM report is mine :slight_smile:
I did troubleshoot for 3 weeks with multiple configurations, I even contacted their (clueless) support. They never mentioned “VMs are blocked”, but Elytra does not run under VM, with no specific error, it just fails.