Fortnite is coming to Linux, so we might soon be able to play it and other games like Apex Legends on Steam Deck and Steam Machine.

Epic Games is officially working on bringing the battle royale shooter Fortnite to Linux. The announcement was teased at the bottom of Epic's blog post showing the new "vibe-coded" Epic Games Store coming to Linux as well. Read more

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At the time, Epic explained that it was going to work with Linux distribution custodians on a set of security requirements needed to run Fortnite. Distributions - short for distributions - are variants of the Linux operating system, each with its own goals and prioritized system operations. For example, Valve's Steam OS is based on Arch Linux. Due to the many differences between Linux distributions, they must implement Epic's security requirements individually if they want Fortnite to run on their operating system. Fortnite is coming to Linux via the EGS launcher, but only if it reaches the "distribution maintainer critical mass". Epic did not specify numbers.

This is big news for several reasons. For the first time, the move will likely make Fortnite playable on SteamOS PCs and handheld devices, including the Steam Machine and Steam Deck. Plus, even if it never reaches that "critical mass," Epic says its work will be available to other developers interested in bringing their games to Linux.

Perhaps the biggest reason this is such a big deal, however, is Easy Anti-Cheat, Epic's anti-cheat service used in Fortnite and dozens of other games, including Dead by Daylight, Rocket League, Apex Legends, and even Elden Ring. While Easy Anti-Cheat supports Linux, including for some of the recently mentioned games, many developers choose not to enable it simply because "its Linux implementation cannot provide the same level of protection as our Windows implementation," as Epic explained in a separate blog post. This is why many games that use Easy Anti-Cheat are not playable on Steam Machine or Steam Deck. The post even mentions Valve specifically, saying that the team will "continue to maintain an open line of communication" to support Steam hardware devices "to the extent technically possible."

Part of the reason Linux has been such a difficult problem for anti-cheat developers to solve is the open nature of the platform, which means that system-level protections—needed—are not guaranteed. In Windows, you can ask users to enable features like TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, which create that secure environment once the hardware requirements are met.

While some of this can be done on Linux, it requires the interest and involvement of distribution maintainers. Easy Anti-Cheat aims to use Linux features such as signed kernel, signed kernel modules and secure boot with certificates to achieve this goal. "These requirements are based on what distribution maintainers already do," Epic explains. The goal is to "bring the level of protection closer to that of Windows".

There is currently no timeline for any of this, but Easy Anti-Cheat will first test the announced apps before making them available to other developers in Fortnite. In other words, if Fortnite gets a release date on Linux, you'll know it worked and we're closer than ever to achieving anti-cheat parity between Windows and Linux.