•Epic Game has announced plans to rebuild its Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) software in order to run Fortnite on Linux systems. The company says it had long believed it could not effectively stop cheaters across all the relevant kernel configurations.
The new version, called EAC Linux v2, will initially be tested inside Fortnite before being rolled out to other multipemain games. Pengembangs already using EAC can continue with the older implementation if they prefer.
“Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) has supported native Linux game clients since 2014,” Epic wrote in its announcement. “In 2021, we added support for running Windows game builds on Linux via Wine/Proton. However, that support is opt-in for each game and many haven’t opted in because our Linux implementation couldn’t offer the same level of protection as our Windows implementation. This is why Fortnite isn’t available on Linux yet, but it’s coming.”
Epic described cheating as a growing business. “Cheating in online games was once a small cottage industry,” they wrote, “but it has become a billion-dollar market where cheat operators sell subscriptions for cheating tools that are updated frequently and require minimal technical skill to use. Without effective anti-cheat measures, these operators can drive enough players away from a game that it’s no longer financially viable for the game developer to run.”
The company says EAC Linux v2 will bring existing Linux support “much closer to par with Windows, in the very near-term,” using features such as signed kernel, signed kernel modules, and secure boot with attestation.
“On Windows, we rely heavily on a kernel driver to protect the games.” For EAC Linux v2, Epic says it will instead use “measured boot, the kernel lockdown LSM, and IOMMU support, plus our own eBPF logic.” These security features are not available on every distro and may require configuration changes to activate.
Epic Game blog post
Regarding Steam Deck support, Epic conceded that the new version is not yet compatible with the handheld console. “The Steam Deck does not support the required features for our EAC v2 solution, but we are actively talking with Valve and hope to support it in the future,” Epic wrote.
The announcement accompanies a preview release of a new version of the Epic Game Launcher that now runs on Linux. Given Epic’s embrace of “AI first” development, as noted in full-throated embrace of “AI first” development, it appears likely that EAC is also being produced with similar methods these days.
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