Thanks to some effort from the team behind Lutris (and Wine of course), you can now run the Epic Store quite easily on Linux.
The official Lutris Twitter account posted this yesterday:
Good news! @EpicGames Store is now fully functional under Linux if you use Lutris to install it! No issues observed whatsoever. lutris.net/games/epic-gam… @TimSweeneyEpic will probably like this
What's interesting is that Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, directly replied to their Twitter post to say "Great work!" but even more interestingly they also sent another Tweet with this:
@LutrisGaming please consider applying: unrealengine.com/en-US/megagran…
So while the Epic Store doesn't have a Linux version currently on their roadmap, it seems they are at least willing in some way to support a community effort of getting it running on Linux. Not ideal of course but better than nothing? Considering all the free games the Epic Store are giving out and likely plenty of them will work fine in Wine, this might be quite interesting for some of our readers.
I tested it out briefly and it does indeed work nicely, thanks to Lutris it really is a one-click install:
To my surprise, installing (and actually playing) The Witness which is currently free on the Epic Store, worked fine as well. Honestly, I'm shocked at how easy this all is.
Personally, I still hope that one day Epic Games do bring their store to Linux officially. I would honestly love to play Fortnite properly on Linux, as I'm sure plenty of others would as there's nothing like it available on Linux. There's some that may be slightly similar but nothing really close.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
ElectricPrism Apr 18, 2019
You do that and bring a native client and we got a truce.
Quoting: ElectricPrism@epic. I want Unreal Tournament 4 self updating on Linux.
You do that and bring a native client and we got a truce.
Good luck updating a completely abandoned game :P
QuoteSo while the Epic Store doesn't have a Linux version currently on their roadmap, it seems they are at least willing in some way to support a community effort of getting it running on LinuxIt sounds so like "let's throw some bread crumbs to those annoying pigeons, er, penguins"
After all these years we're still with the leftovers from the Windows world :(
I know we prefer a proper native support, I do this as well. But being able to play now games, that are known to work well with wine+dxvk (e.g. Metro Exodus), it's at least something.
edit: will we see a community driven project like protondb for games that work with wine/dxvk from the epic store soon, or with this be listed on winehq?
Last edited by Corben on 18 April 2019 at 9:32 am UTC
Quoting: CorbenThis is how it has to start, I guess. We were playing games with wine way before Valve decided to support Linux natively. And this showed them there is interest. Then Microsoft did its store thing, and game platforms where looking for alternatives. Without wine we wouldn't have that I guess. So yeah, I think it's a good start that the Epic client is now working properly on Linux via a compatibility layer. Which may lead then to a native client sooner or later, especially as Epic is looking for Linux engineers. And I guess not only for backend stuff.Honestly, I think it's crazy how many people turn their noses up at Wine. I've said it before and I will say it again, without Wine letting me play some games on Linux in the early days I simply wouldn't be here today.
I know we prefer a proper native support, I do this as well. But being able to play now games, that are known to work well with wine+dxvk (e.g. Metro Exodus), it's at least something.
edit: will we see a community driven project like protondb for games that work with wine/dxvk from the epic store soon, or with this be listed on winehq?
I now take what I can, where I can. If I can get a game working on Linux, officially or not and have fun with it that's what matters most. The majority really don't care about the little details, they just want things to work.
As a consumer, this irritates me greatly. I want choice, not forced exclusivity. Mr. Sweeney doesn't seem to mind, though. EGS is a very developer-oriented store as this article points out. The consumers are very much second-class citizens at Epic, which quite frankly, would be reason enough for me to ignore EGS completely, even if I weren't using Linux. Articles like this one don't help either. In this one Tim seems to suggest that gamers are ignorant, because we "don't understand" what Epic is doing, which is as we all know, a great way to win over customers.
tl;dr: Epic bad.
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