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Issues with EAC when using Heroic/EGS game version, when the game previously worked. Help?

C96ALia C96ALia
in Ask the Community

Hello all! If anyone needs them, here's my specs:

OS: Fedora Linux 38 (KDE Plasma) KERNEL: 6.3.8-200.fc38.x86_64 CPU: 11th Gen Intel Core i3-1115G4 @ 3.00GHz GPU: Intel Mesa Intel UHD (TGL GT2) GPU DRIVER: 4.6 Mesa 23.1.2 RAM: 16 GB

I've recently reinstalled Fedora, going from 37 to 38. On my previous installation of Fedora I was able to use the unofficial workaround prominently posted here on the forums;

@Alakad said:

Hi all! So if you're a Linux gamer you may have heard that DBD is partially working on Linux. To be clear, it's only currently working through the Epic Games Store version of the game. So if you don't own that version, you can buy it but it's no longer available for free unfortunately. I'll try to respond to anyone having support issues in this thread, and I'll also edit this top-level post with new information as it comes out.

Important Note: BHVR has not made any official announcement regarding Dead By Daylight on Linux. They have said they will launch for Steam Deck at some point but have given no timelines. Just because this method is working now does not mean that it always will. Please don't bother BHVR with support issues as they are NOT currently supporting Dead By Daylight on Linux.

Please, if you have support issues, post them here and I will try to help!

DO NOT ASK BHVR FOR HELP ON LINUX RELATED ISSUES

Note: I have heard anecdotally that DBD is working now on Steam (as of 2023-04-30) but I have not tested it yet. Some steps may still be necessary to get DBD working on Steam, but I'm not sure yet what those are. I'll update this guide when/if those steps become apparently and/or necessary.

So anyway, now that that's out of the way, here are the guides:

How to get Dead By Daylight working through the Epic Games Store on Linux

First of all, you need Heroic Games Launcher to run the Epic Games Store on your Linux system.

NOTE: Linux is case sensitive and also doesn't like spaces, so you might want to copy this folder somewhere else easier to remember, and remove spaces and capitalization from the folder's name -- but you shouldn't necessarily have to do this, it's just easier in my opinion.

Once Heroic is installed you need to configure a few things:

  • On the left-side menu bar click Wine Manager
  • Download a version of Wine-GE-Proton or Proton-GE-Proton, the higher in the list the newer it is, so the top option is a good choice.
  • Now make sure you're logged in to the Epic Games Store, if you're not, click Manage Accounts and follow the on-screen prompts. You may need to use the Alternate Login which requires you to login and then copy just the part after authenticationCode
  • Now that you're logged in, click Library in the Heroic menu and search for Dead By Daylight (you might have to select Epic or All from the options in the top bar for it to show up)
  • Once Dead By Daylight is installing, click on the picture of the game (not the gear icon) to go to the Game Page, you should pretty much always do this since there are some settings available in the Game Page that are not accessible otherwise.
  • Now click Settings. In the settings make sure that a Wine Version is selected (the box will be empty if Heroic can't find any Wine versions). Make sure all the boxes are NOT ticked, all options OFF. You can adjust settings under Other to your liking after successfully launching the game for the first time.
  • You're almost there, just one more thing we need to do. Go back to the Game Page (click the back arrow, or from your library click the picture of the game NOT the gear icon). Either click on Install Path to open the path to the game files or navigate there yourself if that doesn't work.
  • Open a terminal window and navigate to ~/Games/Heroic/DeadByDaylight/DeadByDaylight/Binaries/EGS and type the following command: ln -s ../../../EasyAntiCheat/
  • This creates a linked directory to the EasyAntiCheat folder in the game's root directory. So any changes from the game updating will automatically be copied to the linked folder here in the EGS directory.
  • Go back to your library and launch the game! You should successfully make it to the menu screen! Congratulations! Enjoy!

If you get an error saying EAC client cannot be instantiated

In Heroic go to your Library and then click the Dead By Daylight game picture NOT the gear icon. From the Game Page click the three vertical dots in the top right corner and select Force Update If Available then re-launch the game and it should be fixed.

If that still doesn't fix it, go back to the Game Page and click the three dots and this time select Verify and Repair. I find sometimes Heroic glitches out and won't actually run the Verify and Repair command properly. If that's the case, exit Heroic by clicking the tray icon and select Quit. When you launch Heroic and try the above instructions again it should have some green text saying Repairing Game, please wait.

I don't want to play on the Epic Games Store version, I'll lose all my progress because I've only ever played on Steam!

Well then you're in luck! Go create a BHVR Account here: https://account.bhvr.com/

Once you're there, you'll see three cards on the right side for Epic Games Store, Steam, and Stadia. Just link your accounts following the on-screen instructions.

Note: It can take a little while before your accounts are linked so be patient, it'll happen eventually.

How do I increase my FPS from 60 to 120 on Linux?

In Heroic either click on or navigate to the path in the DBD Game Page (click the picture, not the gear icon). The default path for it is ~/Games/Heroic/Prefixes/Dead by Daylight/

From that folder navigate the following folders: Dead by Daylight => pfx => drive_c => users now at this point it might differ, it will either be "steamuser" or the name of your home directory on your system but it won't be the "Public" folder that's in there, so open whatever folder isn't called "Public".

Continuing from there: users => <<your username or steamuser>> => AppData => Local => DeadByDaylight => Saved => Config => EGS

Phew, that was a long journey but we're there. Now open Engine.ini in any text editor and add this text to the bottom:

[/script/engine.engine]

bSmoothFrameRate=false

MinSmoothedFrameRate=5

MaxSmoothedFrameRate=120

bUseVSync=false

Close that file and now open GameUserSettings.ini and search for "vsync" it's on line 79 for me and change the value from True to False so the line looks like this:

bUseVSync=False

That's it, now you should be capped at 120 FPS instead of 60 FPS. Enjoy being able to actually hit a great skill check every time with that buttery smooth framerate!

However after my re-install, and re-downloading the AppImage of Heroic Launcher, the Epic Games version seems to have issues with EAC. I'm repeatedly getting Error Code 1, where EAC falsely thinks I have modified game files; sometimes making mention of the anti-cheat hash catalog not being found, though not always. When changing to using Wine alone, the error changes to one of "The EAC client cannot be instantiated."

When running on just wine alone, the error changed to one of "EAC Client cannot be instantiated".

My troubleshooting steps have gone like this;

  • Restart the game using different versions of proton and Wine. (Wine-GE-latest, Wine-GE-Proton7-41, Proton Experimental, GE-Proton7-49, GE-Proton7-55, two versions of bleeding edge Proton-TKG, Proton 7.0, and Proton 8.0, and just plain wine 8.6 staging.)
  • Restart the Heroic Launcher.
  • Restart the computer and try the above two steps again.
  • Verify game files.
  • Re-install the game entirely.
  • Try deleting all the compat configs for the game and Heroic to rebuild them.
  • Run stress tests using Prime95 on my hardware to check for issues on my end. No errors found.

I'm sort of at a loss, as this previously worked on my Fedora 37 installation I had previously, with whatever Wine-GE version I had installed at the time. And by the reports on ProtonDB, this should theoretically work. If anyone knows how or would be willing to help, it would be appreciated. :)

I hope you all have a good day :)

Comments

  • e1ix e1ix

    idk if you only have the game on Epic, but the Steam version is currently working for me using Proton 8.0-2, without any changes to config or using the Heroic launcher. (I am currently on Debian 12)

  • bionux bionux

    @e1ix said:

    idk if you only have the game on Epic, but the Steam version is currently working for me using Proton 8.0-2, without any changes to config or using the Heroic launcher. (I am currently on Debian 12)

    but the problem of us is that we want use epic to play dbd

  • C96ALia C96ALia

    The steam version is indeed functional (personally using GE-Proton7-55.) The Epic version just seems broken on Linux.

  • BoddyBoy BoddyBoy

    Hello,

    I have the same issue with the Epic Games version of the game.

    My assumption is that the Epic Games and Steam binaries are different and the proton EAC runtime only validates one.

    Before the Steam Deck validation, they mixed the versions and the Epic Games version worked with proton-GE + proton EAC runtime, while the Steam version did not. To get Steam Deck verified, they fixed the EAC runtime to match the Steam version of the game. Since then the Steam version works, but the Epic Games version is no longer recognized by the proton EAC runtime. They don't ship a non-proton, EGS compatible, Linux EAC runtime with the game, as far as I can tell.

    Regards.

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