EA WRC is unplayable on the Steam Deck after latest update

While SteamOS compatibility might’ve come a very long way from the earliest days of the Steam Deck, universal translation layers can only do so much. This is a particularly big problem when a game’s developer makes it not work on the Deck, as is now the case with EA WRC.

EA Sports WRC is one of the publisher’s seminal racing game releases, having released in late 2023 to admittedly mixed reviews. Its spiritual predecessor, DIRT Rally 2.0 (which was made by the same developer, Codemasters), remains a high point for fans of the genre, but EA WRC remained a solid choice for those who wanted a more up-to-date car and track roster, and it even ran well on the Steam Deck up until its latest update. This patch introduces EA’s own anti-cheat solution to the game, which prohibits EA WRC from running on Linux and, thus, the Steam Deck.

You can no longer play EA Sports WRC on your Steam Deck, and that’s by design

“As part of our ongoing efforts to create a safe and fair experience for all players, we are adding EA anticheat to EA SPORTS™ WRC from June 2024,” reads the EA announcement. “Protecting the competitive integrity of our leaderboards is integral to providing a fun, fair and authentic rally experience for everyone.”

Except the Steam Deck players, that is. If you were hoping to hear that the omission of the Deck from the supported platforms was just a fluke, that is not the case: “EA SPORTS™ WRC will not run on the native Steam OS for Steam Deck following the release of EA anticheat.”

The announcement adds that “EA SPORTS™ WRC has officially been categorised as “Unsupported” on Steam Deck since its release in 2023,” which is technically correct but also objectively disappointing, as the game ran just fine on the device up until now.

What this means, in effect, is that you may well have been playing EA WRC on your Deck since day one of its release, but will not be able to continue doing so at all. Some have already requested refunds based on EA’s announcement of the matter, but they do not appear to have gone through for whatever reason.

For those who are wondering why on earth EA might be introducing a kernel-level anti-cheat solution to EA WRC almost a whole year after its release, the annoucement claims the following: “Unfortunately, the last few years have seen a large increase in cheats and cheat techniques operating in kernel-mode, so the only reliable way to detect and block these is to continue to have our anti-cheat operate there as well.”

It’s possible that the game might be hoping to score some points with the e-sports audience with a dedicated competitive mode down the line. Whatever the case may be, EA WRC is no longer playable on the Deck, and it’s highly unlikely this will be the first and the last game to come through in such a manner. A shame, really.