Steam Deck wont run Fortnite, Epic confirms

Date:
Tue, 08 Feb 2022 11:04:15 +0000

Description:
Heres some bad news if you thought you might be able to play the battle
royale on the Steam Deck.

FULL STORY ======================================================================

Fortnite wont be playable on the Steam Deck , Epics CEO Tim Sweeney has clarified.

The news came via a series of tweets from the CEO in response to a denizen of Twitter who asked whether there were any plans to update Fortnite to make it Proton-compatible (in terms of its anti-cheat systems) so it could run on the Steam Deck (which uses the Proton compatibility layer to play Windows games).

The short answer was no, as you can see for yourself: Fortnite no, but
there's a big effort underway to maximize Easy Anti Cheat compatibility with Steam Deck. February 7, 2022 See more

Sweeney did make it clear that Easy Anti Cheat and remember, EAC is the anti-cheat system which Epic owns (and one thats used in Fortnite, of course)
is the subject of a big effort to maximize compatibility with the Steam Deck (an initiative that weve heard a lot about from Valve already).

While Fortnite isnt on Steam , as youre doubtless aware, enterprising users could still be able to run the battle royale on the Steam Deck in theory the handheld is a Linux PC at heart, after all. If Fortnite was updated to work with Proton under Linux, that is, but what Sweeney is making clear is that this isnt going to happen. Analysis: So why wont Epic make Fortnite available for the Steam Deck?

Making Fortnite compatible would be a matter of updating the game and tuning its anti-cheat tech to play nice with Proton. However, as Sweeney makes
clear, he isnt convinced this is the right thing to do in that it would make for an ongoing headache in terms of policing cheating within the game. As the CEO tweets: We dont have confidence that wed be able to combat cheating at scale under a wide array of [Linux] kernel configurations including custom ones.

When the first reply to that tweet was an accusation that newsflash: CEO does not trust his own product, Sweeney swiftly fired back: With regard to anti-cheat on the Linux platform supporting custom kernels and the threat model to a game of Fortnites size, YES THATS EXACTLY RIGHT!

Another reason the chief exec elaborates on in a further tweet runs as follows: Epic would be happy to put Fortnite on Steam. We wouldnt be happy to give Steam 20-30% of its revenue for the privilege.

Supporting Steam Deck hardware is a separate issue, but the market for non-Steam-hosted games on limited availability Steam Deck hardware is how big exactly?

In other words, the effort of getting Fortnite on Steam Deck and combating cheats would not nearly match up to the potential market and reward as
things stand. Its not clear what Steam Deck numbers will be in terms of shipments, but pre-orders were quickly pushed out a long way, and its safe to say there probably wont be all that many units out there for some time yet (given all the component shortages and difficulties any tech production line is facing right now, which broadly arent expected to get any better until later in 2022).

That said, if the Steam Deck blazes a trail for itself and becomes massive in time, well, maybe Epic will think differently in the future.

As a final note, some gamers on Twitter seem to have gotten confused as to Sweeneys message here somehow relating to progress with making EAC games compatible with Steam Deck, and to clarify, thats absolutely not what hes saying. As noted above, theres a big push being made with overall EAC compatibility with Proton; what hes talking about in these tweets is specifically Fortnite. Check out all the best gaming PCs

Via PC Gamer



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/steam-deck-wont-run-fortnite-epic-confirms/


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