Epic Games Launcher preview arrives – Native Linux support, Fortnite for Linux is coming and upgraded Easy Anti-Cheat

Epic Video games have announced their model new Epic Video games Launcher refresh has a Preview accessible, together with Native Linux help and Fortnite is coming to Linux.

I need to admit – I’m totally shocked that not solely are they doing it, however they’re really going all the way in which to get their fundamental recreation of Fortnite with upgraded Simple Anti-Cheat working on Linux too. Though, they are going all-in with AI, and even talked about the brand new app has been “vibe coded”.

Within the announcement they stated:

“To carry Fortnite to Linux, we’re rebuilding Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) and dealing with distro maintainers on safety necessities. As soon as it’s working with a important mass of distro maintainers, we’ll carry Fortnite to Linux through the Epic Video games Launcher.

We’ll additionally make these enhancements accessible to different builders to allow them to carry their video games to Linux gamers. For more information on our work to increase EAC help throughout Linux, try the tech blog we revealed right now.”

I’ve executed a fast check with a Home windows recreation, with the launcher telling you it must do a one-time obtain to help it. All built-in, and labored easily. Doing a little investigating, it seems it is utilizing GE-Proton and installs into: /.native/share/com.epicgames.eglv2/compat/runtime/

From the tech weblog submit on rebuilding Simple Anti-Cheat:

“To shut the hole for Linux, we’re rebuilding our Linux anti-cheat implementation into EAC Linux v2. We are going to carry the extent of safety a lot nearer to par with Home windows, within the very near-term, utilizing present Linux options together with signed kernel, signed kernel modules, and safe boot with attestation. These necessities construct on work that distribution maintainers already do, and the extra distributions that meet these necessities by default, the less gamers might want to change their setup to play.

We’re beginning to attain out to leaders within the Linux group, and can proceed to interact with extra leaders within the coming weeks as we work in the direction of bringing extra superior video games to Linux. Later this yr, we are going to co-host a panel dialogue with Jef Spatela (Fedora Challenge Chief) the place we’ll discuss by means of the trail to enabling truthful aggressive gaming on Linux for gamers.

We’re additionally planning to pilot EAC Linux v2 in Fortnite first, the place we’ll check it in a stay atmosphere and refine it based mostly on what we study. As soon as we’ve validated EAC v2’s effectiveness, we’ll make it accessible to extra recreation builders to allow them to carry their multiplayer video games to Linux gamers too.”

Wow. Okay then.

Epic stated that the Steam Deck doesn’t presently help the required options for EAC v2, however they’re speaking with Valve on it. So hopefully in future that can all be sorted for SteamOS units too. There’s much more element within the technical weblog submit.

At present they’re supporting Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer, Fedora 43 or newer, and Debian 12 or newer. Different distributions may go however Epic will not be supporting or testing on them.

Competitors is nice and I personally stay up for seeing extra firms help Linux like this. And, hopefully, our dedicated anti-cheat game list will have the ability to increase as soon as Simple Anti-Cheat v2 for Linux is out for all builders.

Fortnite on Linux someday quickly although – gosh, that actually is a big shock. One of many greatest video games on this planet.

Is that this actually the yr of the Linux desktop now?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.