As Epic Games continue ignoring Linux / Steam Deck for Fortnite they're putting it on Windows Arm

Ignoring 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.