Valve's Steam Desck has barely arrived and has already managed to focus the eyes of some users and developers. Hopefully it doesn't go the same way as the Steam Machine. In fact, Bohemia Interactive, the creators of the title of DayZ video game, they are investigating to be able to bring this game to Valve's device.
One of the biggest problems that developers are encountering for native versions of Linux video games is the anti-cheat system, Easy Anti-Cheat, which was not supported for this platform, although little by little news is coming out of more developers who have succeeded. And it is that they need to update their SDK, and make sure that everything works correctly, which is not an easy task.
Recently, a user asked Bohemia Interactive about DayZ on Reddit, and the answer was that bringing it to Deck would be unlikely, although afterwards they were asked and the answer was different: «it is something we are investigating«. For example, titles like ARK and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord have already done it, although for titles that use BattlEye it might be different ...
However, at the moment, it seems that Proton may be a better solution to bring it to Linux and Steam Deck. Not long ago EPIC Games announced that Easy Anti-Cheat is already supported on Linux, WINE and Proton, and around the same time it was announced that BattlEye would also have support on Proton and for Steam Deck. For its part, Valve has started surveys to ask users if they prefer native titles or Proton, so they may be thinking of "abandoning" ports and focusing on the compatibility layer as a better alternative to expand the number of titles on Linux and its Steam Deck (don't forget that this portable console is based on SteamOS 3.0, which in turn is based on Arch Linux).