BattlEye have released an announcement confirming that their anti-cheat software will run on Steam Deck's native Proton-based operating system, along with other Linux and Mac-based operating systems. It follows an announcement from Epic earlier in the week that also confirmed Easy Anti-Cheat would also have native support for Linux and MacOS, along with Proton.

The situation appears to be something of an arms race, with BattlEye already having long-standing support for the platform. It's nice to get confirmation that BattlEye will work out of the box on Steam Deck though, and will be opt-in only, with developers choosing if they want to use it or not.

BattlEye has provided native Linux and Mac support for a long time and we can announce that we will also support the upcoming Steam Deck (Proton). This will be done on an opt-in basis with game developers choosing whether they want to allow it or not.

— BattlEye (@TheBattlEye) September 24, 2021

This is good news, as not only do games such as Apex Legends that use Easy Anti-Cheat have an easier time becoming available on Steam Deck but games such as Destiny 2 and PUBG should, in theory, also be supported.

Traditionally anti-cheat has been a problem on Proton-based operating systems, and without it, the games effectively can't run on Steam Deck. This opens the door to a wider number of games now being compatible on Valve's upcoming handheld platform.