Epic Games Launcher 预览版发布：原生 Linux 支持、Fortnite 将登陆 Linux 且升级 Easy Anti-Cheat

Epic Games have announced their brand new Epic Games Launcher refresh has a Preview available, along with Native Linux support and Fortnite is coming to Linux.

I must admit - I am thoroughly shocked that not only are they doing it, but they're actually going all the way to get their main game of Fortnite with upgraded Easy Anti-Cheat running on Linux too. Although, they're going all-in with AI, and even mentioned the new app has been "vibe coded".

In the announcement they said:

"To bring Fortnite to Linux, we are rebuilding Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) and working with distro maintainers on security requirements. Once it’s working with a critical mass of distro maintainers, we’ll bring Fortnite to Linux via the Epic Games Launcher.

We’ll also make these improvements available to other developers so they can bring their games to Linux players. For more info on our work to expand EAC support across Linux, check out the tech blog we published today."

I've done a quick test with a Windows game, with the launcher telling you it needs to do a one-time download to support it. All integrated, and worked smoothly. Doing some investigating, it turns out it's using GE-Proton and installs into: /.local/share/com.epicgames.eglv2/compat/runtime/

From the tech blog post on rebuilding Easy Anti-Cheat:

"To close the gap for Linux, we are rebuilding our Linux anti-cheat implementation into EAC Linux v2. We will bring the level of protection much closer to par with Windows, in the very near-term, using existing Linux features including signed kernel, signed kernel modules, and secure boot with attestation. These requirements build on work that distribution maintainers already do, and the more distributions that meet these requirements by default, the fewer players will need to change their setup to play.

We are starting to reach out to leaders in the Linux community, and will continue to engage with more leaders in the coming weeks as we work towards bringing more awesome games to Linux. Later this year, we will co-host a panel discussion with Jef Spatela (Fedora Project Leader) where we’ll talk through the path to enabling fair competitive gaming on Linux for players.

We are also planning to pilot EAC Linux v2 in Fortnite first, where we’ll test it in a live environment and refine it based on what we learn. Once we’ve validated EAC v2’s effectiveness, we’ll make it available to more game developers so they can bring their multiplayer games to Linux players too."

Wow. Okay then.

Epic said that the Steam Deck does not currently support the required features for EAC v2, but they are talking with Valve on it. So hopefully in future that will all be sorted for SteamOS devices too. There's a lot more detail in the technical blog post.

Currently they're supporting Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer, Fedora 43 or newer, and Debian 12 or newer. Other distributions may work but Epic won't be supporting or testing on them.

Competition is great and I personally look forward to seeing more companies support Linux like this. And, hopefully, our dedicated anti-cheat game list will be able to expand once Easy Anti-Cheat v2 for Linux is out for all developers.

Fortnite on Linux sometime soon though - gosh, that really is a huge surprise. One of the biggest games in the world.

Is this truly the year of the Linux desktop now?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.