The Steam Deck allows players to play just about every game they can think of. This is largely possibly because of technology like Proton under Steam’s hood. Almost every PC game can be played on Valve’s handheld device. That being said, there are a few exceptions though. One of the games that is not available natively on Steam Deck is Fortnite.
Fortnite is one of the leading games out there and Steam Deck not supporting Fortnite is quite a bummer. Several players have been demanding the game on the handheld device as it allows them to play on the go. Besides there are several complex workarounds available that Epic Games could use. During a recent interview, the CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeny was asked regarding the same, to which he explained why players should not expect Fortnite to run natively on the Steam Deck any time soon.
Tim Sweeny explains Fortnite’s incompatibility with Steam Deck
In the interview with The Verge, Tim was quizzed on why one cannot still play Fortnite on Stea Deck even after over six years of release. The CEO explained, “If we only had a few more programmers. It’s the Linux problem. I love the Steam Deck hardware. Valve has done an amazing job there; I wish they would get to tens of millions of users, at which point it would actually make sense to support it.”
“If we only had a few more programmers. It’s the Linux problem.”
Epic CEO explains why Fortnite isn’t coming to the Steam Deck any time soon pic.twitter.com/s6ea80weUW
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) December 14, 2023
The root cause of why Fortnite is not playable on Steam Deck is the Easy Anti Cheat and other systems that work alongside Fortnite to detect cheating. This is done on a kernel level on PC. This means that the system monitors the system along with the OS.
However, when it comes to Linux, Epic would need a robust anti-cheat solution for users. It is more complex, because of the number of versions, called Distros, available for the OS. If Epic Games wants to create a Steam Deck version of Fortnite, it would have to create a native Linux port of the game. However, that is difficult to implement without the justification of standing to gain more users from the decision.
Fans react to Tim Sweeney’s explanation
Although Tim Sweeney gave an explanation, fans did not seem too convinced with the answer. Users were of the opinion that Tim was just blaming the Linux system instead of accepting the developer’s incapability. Others suggested that there are workarounds to the same, however, the team is “just lazy” to figure it out.
A user ‘Paralex’ pointed out, “Linux has the biggest open-source community in the world. Someone already has it running on most if not all flavors of Linux. They can figure it out.” Another user ‘DarkLordWaffles’ writes, “Didn’t they fire like 1000 employees and yet Tim Sweeny has the balls to say it’s not his fault it’s the Linux? Epic games literally makes the anti cheat software other games use to be compatible with the steam deck. Tim sweeny is such a punchline to a bad joke.” (sic)
Clearly, fans did find that justification worth accepting. At the same time, it does not look like Epic Games is very keen on bringing Fortnite to Steam Deck anytime soon.