Nvidia announced its new RTX Spark Superchip this week, opening the door for a new era of Windows on Arm computing. While the show focused mostly on agentic AI, gaming is another big selling point for the platform. As such, both Nvidia and Microsoft are working with developers around the world to bring popular anti-cheat software and DRM support to the RTX Spark natively.
It's ironic that Windows is the harbinger of such a development when the issue has been largely associated with Windows alternatives to begin with. For instance, Linux gaming has always been held back by the fact that some games simply won't work on the OS due to the lack of anti-cheat software. Games like Fortnite, Valorant, Rocket League, and more won't even boot.
Arm-based devices raise another challenge. Since most of these games are compiled for x86, they have to be emulated through Microsoft's Prism translation layer. This already incurs a performance loss, but because emulation does not grant access to low-level components of the OS, anti-cheat or DRM software can't run even on Windows — and that's exactly what's changing with the advent of RTX Spark.
In a briefing attended by Tom's Hardware, the company confirmed the challenge of native ARM anti-cheat and said it is working to bring support for Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, Denuvo, and more. While the games themselves will still be emulated, the anti-cheat software can run natively, allowing the games to boot. "Today, native anti-cheat solutions from partners like Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye, expanded Prism emulator compatibility, and XBOX PC app support means players will have access to a deep catalog of Windows PC games," a Windows blog announcement stated.
If these developers decide to release native Arm versions of their games, then we'll see an even bigger improvement for the platform, but that's not happening today.
To be clear, this is a joint effort between Microsoft, Nvidia, and the game studios, so don't expect Linux to get any better; across Arm and x86, Windows is the unifier. You may be wondering why something like this didn't happen with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series, and the answer is rather straightforward. Those devices simply weren't popular enough to warrant such a massive investment.
Realistically speaking, Nvidia is the only company in the world with enough leverage and resources to be able to pull off a transition like this. It can convince developers to port their anti-cheat software just so it can work on the fancy new chip. That being said, Epic Games did add native ARM64 support for Snapdragon X devices last year, but that's an exception to the rule since it was limited to only Fortnite.
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