steam deck: Steam Deck is going to have a Fortnite ‘problem’, here’s how – Times of India

Valve’s handheld gaming PC Steam Deck is the Nintendo Switch-rival that’s going to be introduced in the international markets soon. While it will support tons of games on the SteamOSit is not being taken into consideration by Epic Games when it comes to Fortnite. Epic Games is not planning on updating fortnite for the SteamOS, said CEO Tim Sweeney in a tweet.

Since SteamOS is based on Linux, those who wish to play Fortnite, would be forced to go for a Windows version. Also, Steam Deck uses a compatibility layer called Proton to make Steam games meant for Windows run on it. The Epic Games CEO, in a series of tweets, said that the company didn’t feel confident enough about implementing its anti-cheat measures in Fortnite with the battle royale game running on custom kernel configurations.

The Steam Deck uses Valve’s SteamOS, which is based on Linux, and makes use of a compatibility layer called Proton so that Steam games compiled for Windows can run on it. Epic Games’ anti-cheat software, Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), is also compatible with Linux and Proton, but the CEO is not in favor of updating Fortnite on Steam Deck.
Sweeney, in a statement given to The Verge, described Linux as “a terrifically hard audience to serve given the variety of incompatible configurations.”
When asked if it would be possible to make Fortnite compatible just for SteamOS, he said “Linux is a small market already and if you subdivide it by blessed kernel versions then it’s even smaller.”
So, for now, things do not look so promising for Fortnite on Steam Deck.