Back in October 2024, Respawn announced they were blocking Apex Legends on Linux platforms (including Steam Deck). Apparently this has worked quite well for them.
Without getting into more outright malicious possibilities as I don’t use Windows and cannot inspect how the application behaves on the platform, you could have things as simple like:
EA didn’t see Linux users as profitable enough to support long-term
EA/Respawn wanted an attempt to garner good will from the community by dropping support for a minority platform
What are they getting out of it?
Without getting into more outright malicious possibilities as I don’t use Windows and cannot inspect how the application behaves on the platform, you could have things as simple like: