Quoting: MalBTW, since I start to get lost here... linux remains unsupported pausesupported :whistle: correct? What we are disccussing here is just the official partial/non intrusive EAC 4 windows support for proton. Or is partial support also for linux native?

EAC now has native support for Linux-based operating systems (again?); don't quote me, but I believe this applies only to the most recent version of EAC... However, Epic Games has publicly stated that they will not support a version of 'Fortnite: Battle Royale' (which uses EAC) for Linux-based operating systems at this time, either natively or via Proton.

This thread is about the reasoning behind that, as there is debate as to whether Epic Games' arguments in support of this stance are justified or not.

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Quoting: catbox_fuguelets not forget that EAC used to work on linux natively prior to Epic buying it.

I've not heard this before, but if true, it's not a good look for Epic Games... I suspect though, that they'll try and downplay this fact, so that people don't point out the hypocrisy of refusing to support Linux-based operating systems.

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Quoting: RCL

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyYour comments imply that you work for - or have some direct involvement with - Epic Games, @RCL...

Yes, I do work there, not on the anti-cheat though. And here I'm privately, as just another Linux user.

Well it's nice to have you here, even in an unofficial capacity... The Linux Community can still indirectly benefit from your presence, because of things like your ability to (privately) provide feedback the your superiors based on "the feeling on the ground".

Far too many senior executives mis-read their customer base; so any feedback, even indirect feedback, is always a good thing in my opinion.

---

I don't follow along enough to know how much Epic Games make off Fortnite: Battle Royale, but you would think that if they were making the sort of money others are making with in-app purchases - and I know some of the companies out there are making huge amounts of money off in-app purchases (only recently I read an article about how just one of EA's sports games was effectively paying for most of their expenses via its in-app purchases!) - that paying for the AI tech to enable server-side anti-cheat solutions would be entirely affordable...

Anybody know how much Epic Games make off Fortnite: Battle Royale (and can actually disclose said information)?

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Your comments imply that you work for - or have some direct involvement with - Epic Games, @RCL...

So how then, is it that Fortnite: Battle Royale is available on Android-based operating systems - which are famously easy to "hack" (lock and unlock the bootloader; replace kernels; run custom code; replace ROMs and loads of other things) - yet it is not going to be coming to the Steam Deck?

Then there's the numbers.

Steam has approximately 25 million active users (the number varies, but it's around this figure) who are all playing games (i.e. every one of them is a potential Fortnite: Battle Royale player); Android-based operating systems have somewhere in the vicinity of 250-300 million active users, but only a portion of those will be actively playing games on their smartphones (most of which are so-called "casual games") and only a portion of that will be Fortnite: Battle Royale.

For comparison's sake, let's say half (about 150 million) are actively playing games on those smartphones on a regular basis and let's say a third of that are actively playing Fortnite: Battle Royale on their smartphone, instead of playing it on a console or computer.

That makes about 50 million users playing Fortnite: Battle Royale on their smartphones instead of a console... 50 Million users is not all that much more than 25 million, particularly if you consider that I'm being generous with my numbers, with a bias towards Fortnite: Battle Royale.

Of course, most of this is guesswork - but I'd be awfully surprised if it's much more than 25 million who prefer to play Fortnite: Battle Royale on a tiny smartphone over a console or a portable console.

In essence, the potential market for Fortnite: Battle Royale on mobile devices is probably about the same and the ability to cheat the game is probably easier on (some) mobile devices (remember, Fortnite: Battle Royale is also available on the Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation Vita via Remote Play)...

As I said above, I personally don't care because if Epic Games don't want to bring Fortnite: Battle Royale to the Steam Deck, it's only a matter of time until there's a viable alternative available... It's not a question of "if" an alternative will become available, but rather "when".

But I do struggle to wrap my head around the business decision, because people that know more about this stuff than I do seem to be able to easily discard most of Epic Games' arguments with ease.

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyIt's no big loss... Feral Interactive do horrible ports, and having a low-quality port available for Linux-based operating systems sends the wrong message to new Linux gamers.

The Feral Vulkan ports they have been making for the last couple of years are the best ever made. Proton can't match it. So that statement is pure nonsense.

Bulldust. I have a number of their games and their ports are "average" at best.

I've even bought a couple of their ports for the Nintendo Switch and every time, I'm not in the least bit surprised to see how low-quality the ports are.

There are exceptions of course, there always are... But in the vast majority of cases, I have found their ports to be rather dismal.

Ironically, 'Tomb Raider' was one of those exceptions - I've always found it to run flawlessly when compared to both my PlayStation 3 and my PlayStation 4 Pro copies, so I was pretty surprised when I read this article.

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Quoting: pete910

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: Lancabanwith everything saifd about the Linux kernel and different versions and hackabiltiy etc. yet it plays on Android, even on 3rd party Roms and Kernels just fine.

Would that not have the same exact issues and from a significantly larger player base than desktop Linux users?

Right now I can take my phone, root it, throw on a different Rom, and even use a different customized kernel, and still play Fortnite. This has been done, proven, viewed, tested, and seems to be OK.

Theoretically yes. I think the overriding issues are that Android is a market big enough to take the risk and generally speaking tech illiterate enough that the likelihood of someone installing a custom ROM to cheat in Fortnite is so unlikely, that it doesn't register as a realistic risk.

Think you've just shot your own argument in the foot there.

It's a given than 99% of cheaters have no clue on how to write a cheat let alone a kernel driver on windows, Which also would be true for Linux side or the deck.

So the entire premise fails as a result of that theory.

The simple fat is that he has no intention of allowing fortnite on the deck. Am sure if the deck had been produced by say Samsung it wouldn't have been an issue.

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: EagleDelta

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: Lancabanwith everything saifd about the Linux kernel and different versions and hackabiltiy etc. yet it plays on Android, even on 3rd party Roms and Kernels just fine.

Would that not have the same exact issues and from a significantly larger player base than desktop Linux users?

Right now I can take my phone, root it, throw on a different Rom, and even use a different customized kernel, and still play Fortnite. This has been done, proven, viewed, tested, and seems to be OK.

Theoretically yes. I think the overriding issues are that Android is a market big enough to take the risk and generally speaking tech illiterate enough that the likelihood of someone installing a custom ROM to cheat in Fortnite is so unlikely, that it doesn't register as a realistic risk.

From everything I've read, they do try to prevent custom ROMs from playing the game. Even when those Custom ROMs do get it running, they have to have root disabled, play services must be installed, and safetynet must pass its checks, among other things.

So, it still requires a fairly locked down Android OS to run the game.

So in other words, they manage to implement some safeguards even when run under the evil Linux kernel :-)

Exactly. They just don't want it (Fortnite: Battle Royale) to run on their direct competitor's platform (i.e. the Steam Deck)…

Quoting: pete910

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: Lancabanwith everything saifd about the Linux kernel and different versions and hackabiltiy etc. yet it plays on Android, even on 3rd party Roms and Kernels just fine.

Would that not have the same exact issues and from a significantly larger player base than desktop Linux users?

Right now I can take my phone, root it, throw on a different Rom, and even use a different customized kernel, and still play Fortnite. This has been done, proven, viewed, tested, and seems to be OK.

Theoretically yes. I think the overriding issues are that Android is a market big enough to take the risk and generally speaking tech illiterate enough that the likelihood of someone installing a custom ROM to cheat in Fortnite is so unlikely, that it doesn't register as a realistic risk.

Think you've just shot your own argument in the foot there.

It's a given than 99% of cheaters have no clue on how to write a cheat let alone a kernel driver on windows, Which also would be true for Linux side or the deck.

So the entire premise fails as a result of that theory.

The simple fat is that he has no intention of allowing fortnite on the deck. Am sure if the deck had been produced by say Samsung it wouldn't have been an issue.

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: fearnflavioThere is one solution: ship a cloud version of fortnite. Not the best solution but depending on how it is implemented could work.
Several games on the Nintendo switch are cloud based like Control and Kingdom Hearts. There are companies that port your game to the cloud.
Not the best solution, still a solution.

Cloud gaming requires a pretty robust internet connection, though (significantly more internets than you need to simply connect a locally installed game to a server). But given that Fortnite already is (was?) available on mobile platforms, I guess Epic is not particularly worried about delivering a suboptimal experience for their very popular digital clothing store for ten year olds.

Quoting: eridanired123

Quoting: RCLTo all people saying that not trusting the client or moving the game to the cloud is the solution - you seem to ignore the existence of network latency.

False.

Gforcenow latency is pretty fine on LOL, GW2 and BDO which are the competitive games I've played. I can assume other gaming clouds to have similar results. And I'm not a resident of a first world country by any means.

Those calling for Fortnite: Battle Royale to run "out of the cloud" have obviously never been to Australia... Australia's "high-quality" broadband struggles with Fortnite; Battle Royale in its current form; I'd hate to see how bad the experience would be if the entire game was run "out of the cloud". 🙄

Quoting: EagleDelta

Quoting: Guestwhat I don't get about this whole article... is how does the heck Fortnite for Android works? and I think there's enough android "distros" out there, that have plenty of different kernels. Did google let them run a proprietary module on their kernels?
I'm sorry if my question is too stupid I simply ignore this.

They will detect if you are running with root, or running with an unlocked bootloader, or try to see if you're running a custom ROM and block those things.

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: emphyFor someone who pretends to be doing stuff "for the good of the industry", Sweeney is displaying a remarkably short-sighted stance.

Sweeney couldn't care less about the industry, he sued Apple because they are a bunch of whiners. Apple ofc did the right thing, any app that wants to take control of your wallet looks SUS to me. He is just a Tencent puppet and he'll do the Tencent "dance" or anything they'll ask. At this point if you consider Sweeney as someone "neutral" and with "fair" opinions, I'm sorry to tell you, but, unfortunately you are being played. He is just a snake oil salesman and a puppet, the opposite of being independent (like ie an indie dev).

The whole thing was about Epic wanting to be able to have their own store within the game that didn't use Apple's payment methods (thereby skipping giving Apple a cut).
I am on the fence about this, as for one it is about two greedy bullies trying to figure out who should get all of the kids lunch money they are picking on. Think of Apple as the mob racket, and Epic wanting to move into their territory without paying their cut on the new 'service' they provide.

There is a solution to this Fortnite business... Valve should work on a better game! Guaranteed if something similar enough, but better comes along, Fortnite will be left in the dust, and 20 years from now when the kids that enjoy it get nostalgic, they will have recreated server side software to be able to play it themselves.

This is what I would like to see...

Believe it or not, I only started playing Fortnite: Battle Royale late last year ('The Last of Us: Factions MP' is usually my go-to multiplayer game) and it is primarily these three things which appeal to me in the game:
* The "battle royale" concept (start with "x" players and no weapons, scavenge for weapons and fight your way down the the last player), which I've never seen in a game before;
* The expansive maps, which change every couple of months to offer new challenges / content / quests;
* The difficulty of the game, which seems to be "just right" (not too easy, not too difficult), so that one can play and not always win or lose (in comparison, I find that most other multiplayer games are usually either too easy or too difficult).

These are things that could easily be implemented in another game, so an alternative to Fortnite: Battle Royale is not entirely out of the question... Who is up to the challenge, and wants to get a head-start on the Steam Deck?

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyCouldn't they just implement anti-cheat software on the server instead?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I would imagine that this would be easier to maintain and it would be far more difficult for potential cheaters to bypass...

They could. But it's equivalent to investing into sophisticated enough AI. They don't want to spend on it. It's cheaper to push spyware junk on the user.

Ah, so the real reason Fortnite: Battle Royale won’t come to the Steam Deck anytime soon is because Epic Games is to cheap and lazy to implement server-based anti-cheat stuff?

Got it.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: RCLBut it is more reactive than preventive.

No one said you need to have a preventive anti-cheat. Or to put it differently, the elephant in the room is that you don't need it to make the game good enough. But good reactive anti-cheat is a hard and expensive problem to solve. Not impossible.

Well a Steam Deck would be tied to a particular ‘Steam’ account and presumably there’s some sort of hardware identifier (a serial number or something) that’s sent to Valve Software’s servers or is readable by software running on the Steam Deck… So just ban those ‘Steam’ accounts and / or identifiers that are known to be cheating.

Even if server-based anti-cheat software was reactive rather than preventive, this’d be a possible solution.

What I don’t understand, is how there are so many online games throughout the world – including for many, many Linux-based operating systems – that operate their own, respective solutions to prevent cheating… Yet Epic Games is adamant that there is absolute no possible way they could do the same?

As has been pointed out by loads of people, this says an awful lot about their anti-cheat solution and I think the real question is (albeit off-topic), is why would a developer even want to consider their anti-cheat solution now that we know how inadequate it is?

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Couldn't they just implement anti-cheat software on the server instead?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I would imagine that this would be easier to maintain and it would be far more difficult for potential cheaters to bypass...

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It's no big loss... Feral Interactive do horrible ports, and having a low-quality port available for Linux-based operating systems sends the wrong message to new Linux gamers.

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Wow, this is a great tool. ProtonDB is more informative; but this is handy if you just want a quick overview of how things are going.

According to a recent interview with Gabe Newell (I can't remember where I read it...), Australia is supposedly a top-priority for the next region in which to release the Steam Deck, so I will be watching this website very closely...

My library [External Link] (2 /3 of which is random crap) - 10% Playable+

• Verified: 6 Games (4.23%)


• Playable: 8 Games (5.63%)


• Unsupported: 1 Game (0.7%)


• Unknown: 127 Games (89.44%)

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Quoting: HamishYou do realize you are replying two months after the fact, right?

I am glad they got that resolved though.

That may be true, but it's not something they just fixed... It's been listed as "Linux compatible" for a long time now (several years).

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