Fortnite is coming to Linux, but not yet, and not on the Steam Deck at first. On October 14, Epic said it is rebuilding Easy Anti-Cheat, the anti-cheat Fortnite uses, into "EAC Linux v2", that Fortnite will be the first game to try it, and that Fortnite will then come to Linux through the Epic Games Launcher, which runs natively on Linux in preview since the same day. Epic gave no date. Until then, the way to play Fortnite on Linux or a Steam Deck is the cloud: free, in a browser, with Xbox Cloud Gaming.
What Epic announced on October 14
- Why Fortnite is not on Linux today: Easy Anti-Cheat has supported native Linux games since 2014, and Windows games running through Wine or Proton since 2021, but each game has to opt in, and Epic says its Linux protection was weaker than on Windows. In its words: "This is why Fortnite isn't available on Linux yet, but it's coming."
- EAC Linux v2: protection "much closer to par with Windows", built on security features Linux already has rather than on a driver of its own. An anti-cheat service starts with a protected game and stops when you quit it.
- Fortnite first: Epic will "pilot EAC Linux v2 in Fortnite first", in the live game, refine it, then offer it to other developers.
- Through the Epic Games Launcher: once EAC Linux v2 works "with a critical mass of distro maintainers", Epic will bring Fortnite to Linux through its new launcher, whose preview runs natively on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or later, Fedora 43 or later and Debian 12 or later.
- No date: Epic is contacting the people who maintain Linux distributions now, and will hold a panel with Fedora Project Leader Jef Spaleta later this year.
What your PC will need
Epic lists eight requirements, checked when you start a protected game:
| Requirement | In practice |
|---|---|
| Signed kernel and modules | Your distribution's own kernel, signed with a key Epic recognises; drivers built outside the kernel, such as NVIDIA's, signed the same way |
| TPM 2.0 | Present on recent PCs; it must be enabled in the BIOS |
| Secure Boot | Enabled in the BIOS, with recognised keys only |
| Measured boot | Done by default by GRUB and systemd-boot |
| IOMMU | Enabled in the BIOS and the kernel, passthrough off (not required on handheld PCs) |
| Kernel lockdown | Integrity mode switched on at boot |
| kexec | Disabled at boot |
| BPF LSM | Loaded and active |
Epic recognises the signing keys of Ubuntu and the systems built on it, such as Linux Mint, of Fedora, of Universal Blue (Bazzite, Bluefin, Aurora), Debian, openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux, plus the Microsoft key that signs the shim bootloader. It plans to open that list to the community.
You will not have to keep that setup all the time: a separate boot entry with these settings is enough for the times you play. And if you start the game without them, Epic says you will only see an error message, never a ban.