Were you hoping to easily play Fortnite on the upcoming Steam Deck? Well, Tim Sweeney the Epic Games CEO has made it clear that it's not going to happen officially. The thing to remember right now is that both Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye do support Linux. Both for native Linux builds and for Windows games run through Steam Play Proton. However, it's all user-space with no Kernel modules.
On Twitter, user Stormy178 asked if there were plans to make Fortnite compatible with Steam Play Proton to which Sweeney replied:
Fortnite no, but there's a big effort underway to maximize Easy Anti Cheat compatibility with Steam Deck.
The questioning continued and when asked why, Sweeney followed up with:
We don’t have confidence that we’d be able to combat cheating at scale under a wide array of kernel configurations including custom ones.
Another user mentioned it seemed that Epic's CEO didn't trust their own product, Sweeney obviously couldn't let that remain unanswered with:
With regard to anti-cheat on the Linux platform supporting custom kernels and the threat model to a game of Fortnite's size, YES THAT'S EXACTLY RIGHT!
In a number of ways, he's actually right. Windows is closed source, so is the NT Kernel and usually 99% of drivers for it are too. Client-side anti-cheat obviously relies a lot on security by obscurity, so people can't see everything it's doing. This is part of the problem on Linux, where the Kernel and practically all development on it is done right out in the open and it changes rapidly. Developing anti-cheat against such an open Kernel probably isn't going to be even remotely easy. There will be ways though, especially if something like the Steam Deck had a fully signed Kernel and some sort of guarantee it's being used - probably numerous ways smarter people know of.
Really though, overall it doesn't give a lot of confidence for developers who might be looking to hook up their anti-cheat ready for their games to work on the Steam Deck.
The big difference it seems, is the size of the playerbase and how much of a target each game is. Sweeney is not saying it's not suitable as a whole, just that Fortnite is a massive target for cheaters:
The threat model for anti-cheat varies per game based on the number of active players and ability to gain profit by selling cheats or gain prominence by cheating. Hence anti-cheat which suffices for one game may not for another game with 10, 100, or 1000 times more players.
One user followed up by suggesting it was just a case of Sweeney not wanting Fortnite on a "rival's platform", to which Sweeney gave this answer:
Epic would be happy to put Fortnite on Steam. We wouldn't be happy to give Steam 20-30% of its revenue for the privilege. Supporting Steam Deck hardware is a separate issue, but the market for non-Steam-hosted games on limited availability Steam Deck hardware is how big exactly?
With that in mind, you're going to need Windows or to stream it via GeForce NOW on the Steam Deck. At least for games without such anti-cheat, you should be able to use the Heroic Games Launcher on the Steam Deck.
It does mean there's space open for another game to take its place on the Steam Deck officially.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: CreakDisclaimer: sorry didn't have the courage to read the 8 pages ^^'
So.... I don't see the link between the kernels and the anti-cheat?! I don't know much about the ins and outs of Anti-Cheat software, so I'm doing some reading right now. Of course, I am no expert because I've read a few pages about it. But I am still an experienced developer, and have a pretty good knowledge of security overall.
I am intrigued to understand why the kernel variations are an issue for an anti-cheat software. I mean... Is EAC storing all the hashes of all the Windows DLLs, their variants, and the graphics drivers, for each releases, including the DLLs/drivers that are currently in development so that developers can test them? Seems like a daunting task.
From what I've read, the solution is more to have a unique signature send frequently to the server, proving that you are not running a different code and thus not cheating. A kernel (whichever variation you have) is basically a set of functions to talk to your hardware. I would understand that an AC software would need a very specific set of features and so the solution would be to support kernels starting from a very specific version. I'm trying to understand how modifying the kernel source code becomes an issue.
Also, security by obscurity has never been a solution. Take a look at HTTPS, it allows to have a secured connection even though everything is out in the open. There are mathematicians and researchers working on these problems (and finding solutions) since the beginning of the computer science.
So I'm confused mainly, and the answers Tim Sweeney is giving us doesn't convince me (I'm not sure Twitter is the appropriate medium for this kind of explanation, but it is what it is...)
EAC needs a kernel driver so that they can override the WIN32 function CreateFile, LoadLibrary and a few others so that they can from the supervisory view of the kernel create runtime checksums of every DLL and EXE that the game loads to see that they have not been changed. Most likely they also just like anti-virus programs have signatures for some well known anti cheats and check if they are being loaded.
So basically their claim here is that only EAC can write Windows kernel drivers but on Linux every single person and their mother can write Linux kernel drivers. The idea here seams to be that the closed nature of the Windows kernel makes it harder to write drivers (which is not true since Microsoft provides tons of open documentation for how to do this) and that only EAC can do this due to the signature model that Microsoft have implemented for Windows drivers (which is not true since any one with money can buy such a certificate [I own one] and it's not illegal to write cheat software so there are no reason to not just purchase a certificate in your own name).
Their third argument looks to be that the Linux kernel changes so often so that EAC cannot create their own closed source kernel driver that works with all possible kernels out there. This one is of course true and is why e.g AMD in the end decided to open source their drivers so that they would be sure that every single new kernel would work with their drivers and they could stop the constant "chase the changes" that they did before and which nVidia have to do still (at some level since they created an open shim between the kernel and their binary blob to have a more stable API for their blob).
Quoting: BeamboomQuoting: F.Ultrathere is no need for cheaters to force Fortnite to work on the Steam Deck in order to cheat, they can cheat right now using Windows
Soooo... Your logic is that since they also have a challenge to tackle cheats on other platforms, they might just as well expand the attack vector?
I mean... That is what you are saying here.
No my logic here is that EAC is chasing an impossible goal and there is nothing that Windows gives them that is helping them in any way shape or form here. It's simply a huge waste to put the worlds most secure lock on a crappy thin door that every single person can kick in while at the same time arguing that you will refuse to install this lock on houses with a chimney because some very determined thief might climb down it (Santa). And we haven't even begun to talk about the presence of windows, how stable the door frame is and so on and on.
But to continue on what you IMHO falsely think is a logic fallacy, if it's so easy to cheat right now on Windows (and will continue to be for eternity) why would any cheater bother to switch to a Steam Deck where there at the moment exists zero working cheats? I agree with you that normally this would be a kind of logic fallacy, but in this case it is not because the original premise is a falsehood / red herring.
CyborgZeta Feb 9, 2022
Quoting: Ali_JohnHeroic Games Launcher gave me the confidence to buy my first game on EGS, Sifu. There was no protondb to check compatibility, which is dumb imo, but luckily I found other players that tried different wine versions and lutris-fshack-6.21-6 worked well, even with the stuck on menu bug gone! Now, I'm wondering when can I play Pubg, Valorant and more!
Keep in mind that Heroic is unofficial, and could be cut out at any time... I prefer to remain on Steam for the time being !
Quoting: MayeulCKeep in mind that Heroic is unofficial, and could be cut out at any time... I prefer to remain on Steam for the time being !
Two totally different tools.
I wish Valve would open up the Source and API for Steam so we can create the ultimate allinone store from the community.
It is just dedicated browser mostly anyway :D
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