Epic have announced that they’re rebuilding their Easy Anti-Cheat software in order to get their flagship battle royale Fortnite running on Linux configurations, after years of fretting that they don’t think they’d be able to shut down cheaters operating across all the associated kernel configurations. It won’t support Steam Deck for the foreseeable, mind.
The newly penguin-friendly edition of EAC is called EAC Linux v2. “Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) has supported native Linux game clients since 2014,” Epic explain in a blog post. “In 2021, we added support for running Windows game builds on Linux via Wine/Proton. However, that support is opt-in for each game and many haven’t opted in because our Linux implementation couldn’t offer the same level of protection as our Windows implementation. This is why Fortnite isn’t available on Linux yet, but it’s coming.
“Cheating in online games was once a small cottage industry,” they go on, “but it has become a billion-dollar market where cheat operators sell subscriptions for cheating tools that are updated frequently and require minimal technical skill to use. Without effective anti-cheat measures, these operators can drive enough players away from a game that it’s no longer financially viable for the game developer to run.”
EAC Linux v2 will bring existing EAC Linux support “much closer to par with Windows, in the very near-term, using existing Linux features including signed kernel, signed kernel modules, and secure boot with attestation,” the blog goes on. They’re going to test-drive it live in Fortnite to begin with, before making it available to other multiplayer games. Devs that already use EAC will get to continue with the older, more compatible implementation of EAC, if preferred.
“On Windows, we rely heavily on a kernel driver to protect the games,” readeth the blog. “This driver isn’t always on, it starts when a game is launched and stops when the player exits. For EAC Linux v2 we will not leverage an equivalent kernel module, and instead we’ll take full advantage of existing Linux platform security features like measured boot, the kernel lockdown LSM, and IOMMU support, plus our own eBPF logic to maintain integrity and detect cheaters. These security features are not available on every distro and may require configuration changes to activate.”
There follows a proper breakdown of the system requirements and conditions for EAC Linux v2, which may mystify anybody who doesn’t use Linux. If you try to launch a protected game without those requirements, you’ll see an error message, but fear not – there shall be no account ban or similar retaliatory measure.
The blog ends with a FAQ that gets into the weeds of specific secure boot keys, while also conceding that, sorry, the new version of EAC isn’t yet compatible with Steam Deck. “The Steam Deck does not support the required features for our EAC v2 solution, but we are actively talking with Valve and hope to support it in the future,” Epic write.
The announcement of EAC Linux v2 accompanies the preview release of a new, features-light version of the Epic Games Launcher, an openly “vibe-coded” storefront that now runs on Linux. Given Epic’s full-throated embrace of “AI first” development, it seems likely that EAC is a vibe-coded production these days as well.