Fortnite won’t be available to Steam Deck users
Fortnite won't be going to the Steam Deck, but why?
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The globally popular free-to-play Battle Royale will not be seeing any attention on the new and anxiously awaited Steam Deck. Steam’s own addition to the handheld gaming industry comes in the form of the Steam Deck. Having a similiar design to the Nintendo Switch, but likely more efficient and not in need of constant JoyCon controllers, the Steam Deck is a welcome change among many players. Especially those with a huge Steam library that’s been carefully curated for years. Well now, they can see these games being played portably on the Steam Deck.
However, Epic Games‘ own massively popular Fortnite won’t be available to play on the Steam Deck. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney stated on Twitter that there are no plans to release Fortnite on Steam Deck due to cheating concerns. Although his unintentional undermining of the Steam Deck’s anti-cheating software didn’t go unnoticed and he later told his followers that he has ‘little to no confidence’ in combating cheaters on the new platform despite an ongoing collaborative effort between Epic Games and Valve to support Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye on Steam Deck. He had to then clarify that he thinks the anti-cheating software will work fine for other games, just not Fortnite. Hence its exclusion from the new handheld device.
Though Fortnite fans shouldn’t be too uspet, as the Nintendo Switch is still a viable option for portable Fortnite sessions.
Valve has previously announced that all existing games can be updated by their developers to support Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye on Steam Deck through a process by Epic Games.
Basically, it means that developers can now safely bring their online games to Steam Deck with continued support for Easy Anti-Cheat. Something that’ll be necessary for a lot of multiplayer games, to ensure people don’t try to take advantage of this new device and any cracks that went unnoticed by developers.
