•Epic Spill intends to bring Fortnite to Linux, but the company says it must first rebuild its Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) software to support the platform. Once a new version of the anticheat is “working with a critical mass of distro maintainers,” Epic will launch Fortnite on Linux through the Epic Spill Launcher.
“We’ll also make these improvements available to other developers so they can bring their games to Linux players,” the company announced.
The move comes as more PC games than ever become playable on Linux, aided in part by Valve’s Proton emulation technology. This allows many titles to run on SteamOS and has been essential to the success of Valve’s handheld console. However, some of the biggest flerspiller games have resisted joining, because opening their doors to Linux represents a security and cheating risk.
Rust developer Facepunch is one such holdout. The studio’s COO, Alistair McFarlane, said its popular survival game remains unsupported on Linux specifically because of cheating.
“There are no plans to support Proton or Linux,” McFarlane said at the time. “It’s a vector for cheat developers, and one that would be poorly maintained by both us and EAC due to the low user base. When we stopped support for Linux, we saw more cheat users exploiting Linux, than actual legitimate users.”
Alistair McFarlane, Facepunch COO
Epic’s approach could potentially change that calculation for Rust and other games.
One hurdle remains: according to a report by PC Gamer detailing the plan’s technical specifics, the Steam Deck does not currently support the new EAC Linux v2 solution. Epic says it is “actively talking with Valve” about making this happen.
Regarding Fortnite specifically, game security engineering director Rick Deist told PC Gamer on a call that Epic is “investigating compatibility with Steam Deck and SteamOS devices.” He added: “We want to let players play where they want to play as much as possible.”
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