Fortnite on Linux / Steam Deck? Not until 'tens of millions of users'

Right so the company that makes "billions" despite:

* Losing a ton of money on their store that they're too cheap/lazy to allocate resources to make a better end user experience (Because it's just another Games for Windows Live minus the DRM)

* Having a game engine that's still ripe with a ton of technical and licensing related issues that they're too cheap/lazy to allocate resources to fix. I'd argue that Unity and Godot are far better game engines to work with because of said issues.

* That killed Unreal Tournament because they were too busy milking Fortnite, and that completely delisted any of the old Unreal games on ALL digital storefronts.

* That delisted Rocket League and Fall Guys from Steam, despite Fall Guys having more players on Steam at it's all-time peak than on the Epic Store AFTER the F2P update. And Rocket League had it's peak player count around the announcement that the game was being delisted from Steam.

Are suddenly now wanting tens of millions of users on the Steam Deck before they even consider ticking off a checkbox to enable anti-cheat support for Fortnite, when both EAC (the anti-cheat they own) and BattlEye supports Proton. This is just the same mental gymnastics as Ubisoft has been making for Rainbow Six Siege.

You'd think that with the Steam Deck being the most accessible way to get into PC Gaming at the moment (in terms of price and convenience), that Epic would be fine with it, as they could indirectly get more people to buy into their ecosystem, as most games on their store works just fine on Heroic Games Launcher (Which even under Windows is an objectively better experience than their own launcher), but apparently not.

This is just the publicly traded company "infinite growth" nonsense that they use to try and get away with nickle and diming their customer base.

It's definitely great that Epic won the antitrust case, because that means Google lost, and Google is the first large tech company in more than 20 years to lose an antitrust case. It indicates a paradigm shift. Hopefully the remedies will be meaningful.

I'm not quite sure what Sweeney is referring to by "the Linux problem". It's such a short answer that it could be a reference to so many things. Steam Deck sales are currently at a few million, but my guess is they will cap out at ~8.9.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: tfkHey Sweeney, are you making a profit yet?

if i had my game finished already i would say something like:
i will publish it on epic games store once it have tens of millions of users

I'm afraid it does. Mind you, none of them are buying games there, they're all just playing Fortnite.

that is the joke, it dont matter how many users it have if no one purchases anything, implying that it has no users or that no one purchase anything have the same effect for all intents and purposes.

but my main point it use his words against himself

Quoting: KingKrouchAre suddenly now wanting tens of millions of users on the Steam Deck before they even consider ticking off a checkbox to enable anti-cheat support for Fortnite, when both EAC (the anti-cheat they own) and BattlEye supports Proton. This is just the same mental gymnastics as Ubisoft has been making for Rainbow Six Siege.

You'd think that with the Steam Deck being the most accessible way to get into PC Gaming at the moment (in terms of price and convenience), that Epic would be fine with it, as they could indirectly get more people to buy into their ecosystem, as most games on their store works just fine on Heroic Games Launcher (Which even under Windows is an objectively better experience than their own launcher), but apparently not.

i dont believe its just a question of ticking an checkbox, sure for games that dont implement all easy anti cheat features, it might be, but the demmand for cheating in a game might be proportional to the ammount of players such game have, the issue was never that people would sundely became tech savy and learn how to develop hacking solutions, but that they will purchase such solutions if they are avaliable on the market, and its a market that move hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, in an game with 1/4 of billions of players the demmand for a cheating solution must be ridiculous high and the potential profits for developing such a solution is enough to power an big company hiring tons of hackers.

in that sense, i believe him when he said that its not easy to make an anti cheat solution that work for an big game like fortinite especially on linux, if you look at consoles they are much more closed than windows and they have more protection against online cheaters as an result.
anti cheats act like an malware, and linux is super safe against it, its like DRM, the main goal of linux is to allow users to do whataver he want , in the contest of media that means piracy so DRM is innefective, that is why netflix just suport 720p on linux, in the contest of gaming do whatever you want mean breaking the rules of the systems, be it in mods or cheating, mods dont harm other players so there is no need to prevent then, cheating on the other hand...

but you mentioned something that i havent think about...
epic store supporting linux, there is no reason to not do it, hell if lutris and heroic already did that, they could at least ensure us that they will not break it, testing it against those programs before they launch an update, or allowing us to use an older version of their client in cases where it break it for us.

its shamefull that an gigantic corporation cant port their store to linux but an team of pretty much volunteers only can make it work.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIt's definitely great that Epic won the antitrust case, because that means Google lost, and Google is the first large tech company in more than 20 years to lose an antitrust case. It indicates a paradigm shift. Hopefully the remedies will be meaningful.

Dunno. As far as I can see, it just means the end of semi walled gardens platforms. Sweeney might think that he can just start leeching from Google work on Android, but his win combined with Apple one is just a signal to tech firms that US law allows closed systems or open systems, no mid ground. Google will most likely rectify this by building its own iPhones. I guess it's good overall, Android was a little hypocritical in the end (technically open, but not commercially due to Google deals behind the scenes). It was just a mean to prevent the likes of Samsung, LG and the rest to play competitors at a time when Google had no hardware experience. But now it has it. For a time it will look interesting but I'm 80% sure it will end the same way as now, just with iPhones vs Pixels instead of droids. All the rest marginalized. And more transparency on the business models which doesn't hurt.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI'm not quite sure what Sweeney is referring to by "the Linux problem". It's such a short answer that it could be a reference to so many things. Steam Deck sales are currently at a few million, but my guess is they will cap out at ~8.9.

The "Linux problem" is a platform you can't close and take control to. Where for all the inconveniences and hussles you can create to coerce users, someone develops a workaround.

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIt's definitely great that Epic won the antitrust case, because that means Google lost, and Google is the first large tech company in more than 20 years to lose an antitrust case. It indicates a paradigm shift. Hopefully the remedies will be meaningful.

Dunno. As far as I can see, it just means the end of semi walled gardens platforms. Sweeney might think that he can just start leeching from Google work on Android, but his win combined with Apple one is just a signal to tech firms that US law allows closed systems or open systems, no mid ground. Google will most likely rectify this by building its own iPhones. I guess it's good overall, Android was a little hypocritical in the end (technically open, but not commercially due to Google deals behind the scenes). It was just a mean to prevent the likes of Samsung, LG and the rest to play competitors at a time when Google had no hardware experience. But now it has it. For a time it will look interesting but I'm 80% sure it will end the same way as now, just with iPhones vs Pixels instead of droids. All the rest marginalized. And more transparency on the business models which doesn't hurt.

Apple won the antitrust case against Epic, didn't they?

Android is open source. It's the Google apps that aren't. Ars has a great breakdown of how Google maintains control over Android: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/

Google has set things up such that competitors stay in their own lane and present a united front against Apple. OEMs are allowed to ship Android on devices, but if they want Google Maps, Google Play, and Google Play Services, they need to comply with Google's rules (namely, don't build an alternative app store or maintain your own Android fork). It's already a monopoly in Google's favor; it's not as if antitrust remedies could make it worse. OEMs are already at Google's mercy, except for the really big ones like Amazon and Huawei. Google is bundling two distinct products together just like IE and Windows.

Google has far less control over powerful app publishers like Epic. It's why they needed to resort to bribery to stop Epic from offering a competing service.

I don't think Epic is interested in "leeching" from Google's work on Android. They want to develop their own payment system so they don't need to give Google a 30% cut. In a competitive market, they should be allowed to do that.

Google Pixels own a pitiful percentage of the phone market compared to other Android phones (I say this owning a Pixel myself). It has less than 5% of most markets. The Nexus phones were the same way. Google Pixels, just like every other Android phone, are just a platform for Google to offer their services to Android users. Google doesn't care about making money directly from phones; they're a software company. They only built a browser so they could make Google search the default. Android exists for the same reason.

If Google stops releasing new sources for Android, Samsung will just fork it, leave the OHA, create their own Play Store and APIs for apps, start building replacements for Google's apps, and app developers will scramble to move to that platform because it's the biggest Android platform by far. Most other OEMs will flee to that fork of Android too. Google gains nothing from this, but they lose a lot.

But in case it wasn't clear, fuck Epic.

And yet all they really need to do is add the Linux EAC binaries as quite sure they did that would work just fine in lutris.. what a piece of work this guy is

Quoting: elmapulif you look at consoles they are much more closed than windows and they have more protection against online cheaters as an result.

Except the Nintendo Switch, which was defeated by a paperclip and has had its online games plagued by cheaters since just a few months after it launched.

I wonder how that impacts the Switch port of Fortnite, come to think of it?

Do we really want the likes of Fortniters in our community???....... I would rather they stayed in their nice cosie walled gardens away from us........

Quoting: StoneColdSpiderDo we really want the likes of Fortniters in our community???....... I would rather they stayed in their nice cosie walled gardens away from us........

It doesn't look like Mr. Sweeney wants them to join us, nor us to join them, anyway.