Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, described the Steam Deck in 2021 as an “incredible move by Valve”, praising it as “an open platform where users are free to install any software or software they choose”. But he recently delivered some bad news to Fortnite fans hoping to play the battle royale game on Steam Deck, saying Epic has no plans to update it for handheld.
Fortnite isn’t on Steam, but it should still be able to run on Steam Deck, which despite the moniker being an open platform handheld, you can do whatever you want with it. It’s a little Linux PC, if you want to treat it this way.
This led Twitter user Storm178 to ask Sweeney if there were any plans to update Fortnite and its Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye implementations to run in Proton, the compatibility software that allows Windows-based games to run. on Linux based SteamOS. .
“Fortnite no, but a great deal is underway to maximize Easy Anti-Cheat compatibility with Steam,” Sweeney tweeted in response. When asked why not, him he answered“We’re not sure if we can combat large-scale cheating in a wide range of kernel configurations, including custom configurations.”
Fortnite no, but a great deal of effort is underway to maximize Easy Anti Cheat compatibility with the Steam Deck.February 7, 2022
Sweeney’s suggestion that Easy Anti-Cheat (which is owned by Epic) is a reliable solution for other games on Steam Deck, but not Fortnite, is surprising, if not entirely unreasonable given that Linux is open source .source and therefore subject to fiddling and customization. in a way that operating systems like windows are not. However, that’s not the kind of thing you might expect Sweeney to admit. In subsequent tweets, you have stated that it’s the size of Fortnite that makes it more vulnerable than other games.
“As for the anti-cheat on the Linux platform that supports custom kernels and the threat model for a game the size of Fortnite, YES, THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT!” she tweeted. “The threat model for anti-cheat varies by game based on the number of active players and the ability to make a profit by selling cheats or gaining exposure by cheating. Therefore, sufficient anti-cheat for a game may not be enough for another game with 10, 100 or 1000 times more players. “
As for the anti-cheat on the Linux platform that supports custom kernels and the threat model for a game the size of Fortnite, YES, THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT!February 7, 2022
That didn’t end the conversation on Twitter, where many Fortnite fans claim that Sweeney is indeed undermining trust in Easy Anti-Cheat and begs him to reconsider. Things are a little more pessimistic on the linux_gaming subreddit, where several users claim that Sweeney is indifferent or actively hostile to gaming on Linux.
“Epic will never act in a way that benefits Steam or Steam Deck (and therefore Linux),” doubleh wrote. “While they would also benefit from having Fortnite on another platform, at this point they are just doing things out of spite of Steam (like their policy on NFT and crypto games).”
(Immediately after Valve said it would not allow NFT or cryptocurrency games on Steam, Sweeney said the Epic Games Store “will welcome games that use blockchain technology.”)
I don’t associate myself with that conspiratorial corner: I’m not a programmer but I think the greater chance is simply that, as Sweeney said, trying to protect a game as popular as Fortnite from cheaters across multiple custom Linux distributions is too much of a headache. test for the benefit of having it on the Steam Deck, which will likely be relatively small for now.
Epic declined to comment further on Sweeney’s tweets.