Tomorrow, some people who own For Honor will wake up with the game still sitting neatly inside their Steam library. They just will not be able to play it on the machine they have been using. Ubisoft has confirmed that For Honor will stop working on Linux and Steam Deck from 10 September as part of a new competitive-security push. The Windows game is not shutting down and nobody’s Steam licence is being deleted. That distinction matters. It does not make the consumer problem disappear.
This is not a traditional server shutdown
Online games disappear eventually. Servers close, player populations shrink and contracts expire. That is not what Ubisoft says is happening here. For Honor continues. Ranked play continues. Windows customers continue.
In its official Ranked FAQ, Ubisoft says it is removing Linux access because the protection required for the new competitive environment cannot be meaningfully deployed on that platform. The company leaves open the possibility of restoring access if another solution is found.
For a Steam Deck owner, the practical result still resembles a shutdown. Press Play on September 9: the game works. Press Play after the cutoff: it does not. The hardware did not become too weak and the licence did not expire. Ubisoft changed the supported environment.
Steam’s 14-day rule is not the whole conversation
Valve’s ordinary refund promise is simple: a title requested within 14 days of purchase and played for under two hours will generally qualify. A long-owned multiplayer game obviously blows straight through those thresholds. Yet Steam’s own refund guidance also says customers outside those rules can still submit a request for review. That is not a guarantee. It does mean the automated window is not the only conversation customers can attempt.
Australian consumer law may matter
Australian customers have another layer. The ACCC says online games are covered by Australian Consumer Law, and developers and retailers must not mislead buyers about game descriptions or access to features. Its broader guidance says a product may have a major problem when it cannot be used for its normal purpose, or for another purpose disclosed to the seller before purchase, and cannot readily be fixed.
Does losing Steam Deck compatibility automatically satisfy that test? POPTOPIC cannot declare that, and this is not legal advice. Circumstances matter: what the store displayed when somebody bought the game, whether Steam Deck use was an important stated purpose and what access remains. The useful point is narrower: Australian statutory rights do not vanish merely because an automated form has a 14-day box.
Ubisoft has a legitimate security problem
The strongest defence of Ubisoft is obvious. Cheating ruins competitive games. If the company genuinely cannot deploy the protection it believes Ranked Dominion and Ranked Duel require on Linux, pretending otherwise would push the cost onto every other player. Security engineering is not solved by telling a developer to “just support Proton”.
What deserves scrutiny is who bears the financial consequence. A Steam Deck customer did not suddenly install unsupported hardware inside Ubisoft’s servers. Ubisoft changed the environment. Valve runs the storefront, took the payment and sells the handheld. The customer simply bought something and used it.
So who owes the refund?
Responsibility is annoyingly split. Ubisoft controls the game and chose to withdraw Linux compatibility. Valve controls the storefront and refund process. For ordinary players, that distinction is corporate plumbing. They care that money went out and functionality disappeared later.
It is the same fragility behind our broader argument about digital ownership. Nothing broke inside the customer’s Steam Deck; a decision elsewhere in the chain closed the door. The problem looks even sharper beside Ubisoft’s absence from Xbox’s early disc-to-digital rollout. Consumers keep being asked to trust access they do not control.
Valve should create a clear human-review path for customers who bought and played For Honor on Steam Deck before this announcement. Ubisoft should say what evidence those owners need and whether compensation is available. Until then, the licence remains in the library, the game remains alive and one supported doorway closes tomorrow.
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