Nvidia’s RTX Spark passed most of my anti-cheat tests, but Valorant and Call of Duty still won’t run (yet)

Windows on Arm hasn't been the best platform for gamers, but Nvidia promised that every app or game ever made will run on RTX Spark laptops, and I'm here to hold them to that promise. Windows on Arm runs non-native programs and games through the Prism translation layer, which creates issues for existing anti-cheat systems that run in kernel mode. Which is most of them, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

No, it's not a train. It's Nvidia, who wants its RTX Spark devices to succeed, so it has been throwing its weight behind getting the game developers to get their anti-cheat systems working on Windows on Arm. I've got most of the anti-cheat programs represented in my game library, so I tested the nine most popular, and the results are promising. Even more promising, every anti-cheat that failed already has pledges of future support from the developers, but that won't happen until 2027.

I tested the most popular anti-cheat systems used for multiplayer gaming

Five of the nine already work, with promises of future support from most of the rest

Multiplayer gaming has a cheating problem. It always has, it (probably) always will, and that's a problem for game devs. To combat this, multiple anti-cheat systems exist; some are DRM-based, while others monitor runtime tamperingto ensure fairness in multiplayer titles.

Now, being able to install the anti-cheat software isn't enough. Neither is loading the game, although most games that fail to install the anti-cheat software refuse to start. You don't really know it's working until you can load into a match, so that's the bar I set. If the game didn't manage that, it got marked as not supported (yet).

Now, games like Counter-Strike 2 and Roblox that rely on user-mode anti-cheat load as they do on my x86 machines. Marvel Rivals took a little longer to load because it wanted to cache global shaders, but the anti-cheat loaded without a hiccup. Destiny 2 gave me a pop-up to install BattlEye before it launched, and I had to run it a second time for it to stick. I'm pretty sure that was the same on my gaming PC, but it was 1,200+ hours of playtime ago, so I don't remember exactly.

Call of Duty: Warzone crashed on launch with a nondescript error code, which doesn't rule out another reason for the game crash. Valorant installed, then refused to install the Vanguard anti-cheat driver. Both Battlefield 6 and Delta Force refused to load, but at least they were nice enough to give me a pop-up that said the current hardware was unsupported and to use an x86 processor. Five out of the nine anti-cheat systems is a pretty good result for a new platform on launch week.

Why anti-cheat breaks on Windows on Arm

Prism can translate a game, but it can't translate a kernel driver

The Windows on Arm translation layer, Prism, is good at handing x86 game code. I've not found a single-player game that hasn't run so far, but multiplayer is a different beast. Kernel mode anti-cheat needs a native ARM64 driver, or it won't load. The Windows drivers aren't going to let a virtualized CPU run them. That's why these drivers exist in the first place, because cheaters virtualize the platform and inject their own code to cheat.

The problem is that it takes more than one company to make anti-cheat viable. It needs buy-in from the developers and publishers of the games, because they're not going to spend resources on a platform nobody will play on. It needs the developer of the operating system on that platform, otherwise the kernel drivers won't be able to get the access they need. Then it needs the anti-cheat maker to create an ARM64 driver, and Nvidia to provide hardware drivers while pushing all the other partners in the right direction.

Take BattlEye, the anti-cheat system used in Destiny 2 and many other games. It's also used in PUBG, but because the developer hasn't finished their part, it won't have support for RTX Spark until early 2027.

Who's on board with fixing anti-cheat compatibility?

Every holdout has promised future support

Nvidia's launch announcement for RTX Spark says that the company is working with all the leading anti-cheat technology makers to bring support to the platform. That list includes BattleEye Anti-Cheat, EA Javelin Anticheat, Easy Anti-Cheat, RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, Vanguard, and Tencent Anti-Cheat Expert, and crucially, it covers the four that failed to launch in my testing this week.

That's a promising start, and 2027 will tell whether those promises come true. Some, like BattlEye, are going to be a game-by-game basis, while others, like Vanguard, look to be publisher-wide. There is one caveat: only RTX Spark has been named as getting support. Whether this will also cover the wider Snapdragon market is an open question right now.

GeForce Now can help with all but one

Until the anti-cheat makers and developers get their systems working, there is one bright spark. You can play all but Riot's games through GeForce Now, and let Nvidia's servers handle the computing load for you. It's come a long way since launch, and playing earlier today on Battlefield 6 briefly wasn't a terrible experience. I don't think cloud gaming for multiplayer shooters is the way forward, but it might be a temporary fix if you want an RTX Spark device to be your main computer.

The RTX Spark will be a good multiplayer laptop in 2027

Here's the thing. Anti-cheat systems for Arm laptops are no longer a technology problem. Nvidia has put its weight behind getting these systems running, and it's now just a waiting game for the rest of the developers and publishers to come good on their promises. Nvidia tends to get its own way, so it feels like a question of when, not if, and that hasn't been the story before now.