Fortnite will not come to the Steam Deck. That's a hard blow. Read all about it below.
Fortnite is easily the biggest game out there, so to hear that it will not be playable on the Steam Deck is actually really shocking, yet it is exactly what Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney revealed today.
Fortnite Not Playable On Steam Deck
Why? Well, it's not because the Steam Deck can't run Fortnite. It's actually a reason that doesn't first come to mind, but is very logical when it does: The Steam Deck's Anti-Cheat is the problem.
There’s a big effort underway to maximize Easy Anti-Cheat compatibility with Steam Deck. 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.
This is down to the Steam Deck running on Linux when it releases this month, which is an open-source operating system, allowing for a lot of access.
The threat model for anti-cheat varies per game based on the number of active players and the 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 1,000 times more players.
According to Sweeney, Fortnite is at a higher risk than other games, but according to the internet, this is just down to the competition between Epic Games and Valve. Either reason makes sense, and neither matters, because ultimately, all Fortnite fans lose on this one.