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PayPalIgnoring one smaller market while gleefully supporting another, Epic Games have announced they're getting Fortnite along with Epic Online Services Anti-Cheat on Windows Arm.
Announced March 13th by Epic Games in a news post they said:
We are working with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to add Windows on Snapdragon support to Epic Online Services Anti-Cheat, also known as Easy Anti-Cheat, and make Fortnite available for Windows on Snapdragon devices later this year. This will help developers bring more games to more devices.
Worth noting that Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat does support Linux (including Steam Deck with SteamOS Linux), and there's many games that are supported (check out our dedicated anti-cheat section). However, EAC doesn't support the kernel-level side of it on Linux, which has resulted in a number of games actually removing support like Apex Legends.
Tim Sweeney of Epic Games previously said back in late 2023 that it wouldn't make sense to support Fortnite on Steam Deck until it has "tens of millions of users". I still have my doubts Epic will ever do it, even if the amount of Steam Deck users and SteamOS devices (with a public SteamOS Beta coming) continue to increase, since Epic firmly see Valve as a competitor with their Epic Games Store. Not that the Epic Store is actually doing well, as it continues coasting on revenue from Fortnite while seeing a cut in third-party game spending.
Still, money talks, and what Sweeney said does still make sense purely from a business standpoint — they want to see the big bucks come in from each platform they add. Especially when Epic have others to keep happy like Tencent, Disney, Sony and more who have invested in them. Windows overall is already big, and Windows on Arm is likely to get bigger quite quickly with Epic noting it's a "rapidly growing segment of the PC gaming market".
Who knows, maybe Epic and Sweeney will prove me wrong one day and actually get Fortnite on Linux platforms. For that, we need those millions of users, and our only hope clearly is Valve for that. So I do hope we get a Steam Deck 2 and eventually a proper living room box. Valve did only just reveal that 330 million hours were played on Steam Deck in 2024 up 64% from 2023 so there's plenty of hope there.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
the first one ignores the kernel existence by hardening the executable itself.
The second one only confirms the existence of the trusted functions(how it achieves that is even secondary).
The third one checks behavioral patterns in the firmware.
Caldathras 2 hours ago
As a result, you are missing the whole point of the matter. It is not the question of ownership as you define it. The actual point is that, with GOG (and Itch.io for that matter), the offline installers are independent of a software client. Regardless of DRM-free status of the game software, the Steam and Epic launchers add another layer of DRM to installing and playing the games. To my knowledge, it is not possible to install a game purchased from Steam or Epic without their respective launchers.
Piracy is not part of the question as @wytrabbit has already stipulated that ownership of a legal license (via a digital receipt) is an essential concern. This receipt, coupled with the offline installer, is, effectively, a perpetual right to install and play the game legally.
Is this perpetual right, by your definition, ownership? No. But, from the perspective of the licensee, "ownership" is not the software code and assets, it is the right to install and play the game whenever they want.
marcus 42 minutes ago
To my knowledge, it is not possible to install a game purchased from Steam or Epic without their respective launchers.
For Steam it is. You can just take the game directory of any game that is not tied to Steam hard (i.e. uses it as DRM) and run it wherever you like. If it integrates achievements you might have to load a shared library to avoid it trying to contact the achievement services, but most games will actually gracefully ignore that and not track achievements if they are found to be running without Steam running. I have many games that are like that. It is a common misconception that all games bought on Steam would be tied to Steam.
This receipt, coupled with the offline installer, is, effectively, a perpetual right to install and play the game legally.
This is just wrong. You *always* buy a license to use the software. While you may be *able* to install the software with an offline installer if your license gets revoked (often that license is from the publisher and not actually from GOG or Steam) then you are using the software illegally.
If the license gets revoked on Steam and you do not have an offline copy because a game was tied to Steam, which is not always the case, as explained above, then you could just as well get a pirate copy and be on the same legal grounds as you would be with Steam. Yes, it is less cumbersome on GOG, but it is not more legal there. Your "receipt" means nothing. You also get one from Steam. But in all cases that is a receipt for a license which is *not* perpetual.
It is just disingenuous from GOG to pretend that it is perpetual when really, it is not.
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