Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was asked by Verge why there is no support for the Steam Deck for Fortnite
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was asked by Verge why there is no support for the Steam Deck for Fortnite
278 comments
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Poor indie studio Epic games couldn't possible afford to support Linux, they only make about 5.6 billion a year and have a mere ~3000 employees, leave the little guy alone!
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Won't you PLEASE think of the shareholders?! They don't want to ask the government for yet another government bailout.
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Wait… Epic Games received a bailout?
And what does that have to do with making a Linux port if there’s no commercial incentive?
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They’re spending every dime suing Google and Apple. Epic is now a law firm.
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Absolute BS, all they have to do is enable proton support and people will go out of their way to play it. Tim Sweeney is simply being a slimy jackass.
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When isnt he?
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I imagine it's like breathing for him...
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Tim Sweeney is awesome. He’s one of the biggest conservation donors in my state and is personally responsible for permanently saving over 50,000 acres of land from development, protecting crucial habitat in a rapidly developing state, allowing public trail and nature preserves to get created. He lives in a normal house and drives a normal car and hikes the land he preserves when he’s not working. He’s a billionaire that lives a modest life, doesn’t mess with politics, and a true philanthropist. He doesn’t give to get press. The few articles out there about his philanthropy are because reporters stumble across it when reporting on whatever new nature preserve is opening in their area.
He might have some business practices that are problematic but are endemic to the industry.
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Doing good with one hand doesn't excuse using the other to smother FOSS progress. No matter how humble you are materially, or reasonable in local policy, that doesn't mean he is right in the many bullshit stances he's dug himself into where the games industry is concerned. He does have a point in some places, but holy shit is it hard to take him seriously when half the shit he gripes about other companies doing, Epic does too. And that's before we talk about the scummy BS only Epic does.
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philanthropy is the industry of laundering money and reputations
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hey look, a billionaire bootlicker, what are the odds
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You can criticize bad actions even when they're done by generally "good" people, believe it or not.
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Would love some sources!
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Shhh. Tim said something the Internet disagrees with so we all have dog pile on him.
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Them not bother with Linux says all there is to say about their anti trust cases. Only thing that bothers them about monopolies is that they arent one, and even when there is an opportunity to enter into a market where there is no competitors they don't want to bother investing in it. They don't care about open platforms or investing in it first.
It's why they were late to getting a hold of PC distribution. And in the unlikely event Linux OS takes off be complaining about Steam's presence there.
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I don't think they've ever cared about open platforms, they just care about profit. The Google and Apple cases were intended to allow them to bypass the app store fee for microtransactions. That's it.
So them not supporting Linux has nothing to do with Linux itself, but the possibility for profit. If you read between the lines, Sweeney is basically saying, "our people are making more money on other projects than they would working on Linux support." If Linux had lots of users that wouldn't play on their other platforms, they could possibly make more by supporting Linux than other efforts (e.g. more cosmetics).
Sweeney is a simple guy, if it makes him more money than what he's currently doing, he loves it. If it doesn't, he'll avoid it. There's no deep seeded hatred of Linux here (EAC and Unreal Engine both support Linux, and the old Unreal Tournament games were Linux native), he just likes money more than anything else.
Sweeney is uncomplicated, and I like that. There's no veiled promises or expectations, so it's really easy to understand exactly why he does the things he does. I don't buy his games or use his platform because I expect him to do the bare minimum to make money, so I instead spend my time and money elsewhere. Valve earns my business, Epic does not. I don't hate Sweeney or Epic, I just find them uninteresting.
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Client running code should always be considered compromisable, that's security 101. Relying on kernel module checks is a terrible practice, and not a fundamental guarantee of safety either.
Good, secure anti-cheat happens serverside. But that's harder and less broadly applicable, so Epic doesn't want to bother with it.
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Cheats nowadays don't even need to run on your machine. You can get a second computer that is connected to your computer via a capture card, analyze your video feed with an AI and send mouse commands wirelessly from it (mimicking the signal for your USB receiver).
These anti-cheats are nothing more than privacy invasion, and any game maker that believes they have the upper hand on people that want to cheat are very wrong.
Opening up anti-cheat support for Linux would at least make them more creative at finding these people from their behaviour, and not from analysing everything that's running in the background.
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Sounds like the same excuse that would be made back in 2008 when epic felt consoles were more worth investing in than PC and only seeings cons to the hardware, and took until 2018 to even bother to try to start their own digital distribution.
And here's Linux in its infancy just beginning to start becoming a little more accessible to regular people, and potential to enter the market early and also get more control compared to all the platforms run by other companies they complain about. And yet, like before they don't want to bother investing in anything themselves and taking risks to get established first before competitors gain a foothold.
Simple fact is for all the technical excuses they don't care unless another company shows it is profitable to do first.
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So he want the game to get to 10 millions player on steam deck only then support it, but without supporting it the game won't get to 10 millions player. It's not a linux problem Tim, it's you.
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Yea it's not even like Fortnite runs unofficially on Linux. Fucking "anticheat"
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No.
He wants the Steamdeck user base to be 10 million, so it’s large enough to support a player base that can generate revenue if targeted.
And frankly it’s not a him problem. Nearly every dev refuses to release on Linux (and Mac) because of its small user base.
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They don't have to release on Linux at all!!
\ All they have to do is click a checkbox in the EAC SDK & contact Battleye to support Valve's Proton & that's it!!
\ It is a Tim Sweeney problem. -
It's one thing to not release for Linux (thanks to wine and proton it's no Biggie) another thing is to actively sabotage it to run on Linux which some Developers who can't check a fricking Checkbox in EAC do.
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Support for Steam Deck != support for Linux version. Steam Deck use Proton to run Windows game on linux seamlessly.
Their direct competitor, Apex Legend, is steam deck verified. Big games like Monster Hunter World/Rise, Cyberpunk, Baldurs Gate 3, Elden Ring, etc etc, all steam deck verified. Check out this page for more info
It's not a Linux problem, it's a Tim Sweeny problem.
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10 million is just an arbitrary number he will not honor when it is reached.
Valve has sold 'multiple millions'(source) already. The 10 million will probably be reached soon. Not even to mention all the Linux users.
And frankly it’s not a him problem. Nearly every dev refuses to release on Linux (and Mac) because of its small user base.
Yes it is. He does not have to release for Linux. He just needs to allow the anti cheat to run on Proton. This is a simple config change not more. Fortnite will probably run fine on Proton.
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With that mind set explains why Epic was so late into trying to get into PC distribution.
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Apparently they have enough developers to add in crappy emotes and crossovers but not enough to support one of the most popular operating systems.. makes sense
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Adding emotes is a different skill set than getting it to run on Linux, but there's plenty of UE5 games on steam deck already so surely it can't be that hard...
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adifferent skill set
you're right, given that all it'd take for it to work on Linux would be ticking a box in EAC console, the anticheat software that they develop themselves.
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Those are artists not developers
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Lmao at one of the most popular.
I don't agree that Epic doesn't have enough resources, but realistically Linux makes up such a tiny proportion of systems I don't blame any other developer for not supporting it. Would be a waste of resources.
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Valve has sold multiple millions of steam decks. Fortnite is a popular game. What better way to grow a platform than to develop a popular game for it? Am I not wrong in thinking you'd increase profits having invested in another area? Especially if it would only take "a few more programmers"? I know Tim Sweeney doesn't want to provide profit to Valve and I know he's also a fucking idiot, but more money is more money...
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Tim Sweeney has a personal grudge against Linux.
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I don't think it's Linux.
I think Tim Sweeney is just like all of the big publicly traded companies where they do not want the best thing for their customers and only want to control them.
Valve, and thus Gabe Newell, is actually making pro-consumer choices, which is success that Tim Sweeney wants.
I think the grudge is against Gabe Newell and Valve.
There is a chance that Tim Sweeney would actively shit on Linux anyway, since that would reduce control over consumers (and yes with all of the deceptive practices Epic does and how they fight lawsuits in court, they definitely are not trying to give control to the users).
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He hates penguins?
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Tim Sweeney has the emotional development of an 8 year old
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Maybe the nerdy Linux guy stole his gf in high school?
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I can tell you one thing and it's that this is not about his feelings. It is about it not being worth the effort of porting the game to Linux. If there was as many steam decks as there are switches, you can bet it would be on steam deck. He doesn't not care about Linux, he cares about placing his effort in the right place to make profit.
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The effort from the dev side would be negligible as all they need to do is allow people to play it through Proton. Nobody needs to engineer a Linux runtime. Most games that work on Steam Deck don't have Linux support.
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also why the fuck does Lego Fortnite require anticheat? it's a survival co-op, there's no competitive element, and yet from what I've read it still kicks you out when you're trying to play it on Linux.
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Does it have a Funbucks store?
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what's fortnite's anticheat like? my understanding is that a lot of games that would normally have no problem running on some flavor of linux or another but their anticheat software requires some ridiculous level of privilege that linux won't (and shouldn't) give it
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Fortnite uses Easy Anti Cheat, which is made by Epic (that is, Fortnite's own developer). EAC works fine on Linux; it just needs the developer to enable it.
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Compare and contrast
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You weren’t supposed to see this!
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I think, people here look at it from the wrong side.
The code changes required for Linux support aren't the issue.
But if they support Linux, they have to support Linux. This is not some student's first indie game, but instead a massive game with up to 290 million monthly active users. That's 3.7% of the whole world's population! (And it's also more than the number of total Linux users.)
So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros on all sorts of hardware configurations. That would increase their testing costs by around a factor of 20.
They also need to support customers if they have problems. Considering the variability of Linux configurations, chances are high that this comparatively small segment of players will consume an aproportional amount of difficult support requests.
And lastly, if the Linux version of the game has some serious bugs on some setup, it might likely be that all these Linux users think the game is shit and start talking badly about it.
So it's just a simple cost calculation: Does Linux support increase or decrease the total profit?
And if the variables change, the calculation changes with it. Exactly as Sweeny said in his post. People like Sweeny don't care about ideals or about which OS they prefer. They only care about money.
And the revelation that a CEO likes money and dislikes risk isn't exactly hard to figure out.
I'm not saying that it's good, but top capitalists tend to be capitalists.
And in the end, I'm pretty sure someone who has all the business figures and frequently has to defend those in front of the shareholders probably knows much better what makes business sense than any of us. Someone like him goes where the money flows.
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So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros
It absolutely does not mean that.
Pick a steam deck, support a steam deck, 3 major releases. If the SD runs on enterprise Linux that's a 10 year support window.
That's a perfectly viable plan - much like "releasing on x box" - and with an understandable market clearly delineated. Everything else can be "hey try, but don't call us" and we'd all still try.
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This is a really good idea--they officially support the steam deck, and that means it's unofficially supported on other Linux distros. The community gets what it wants without a huge extra load on Epic.
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Honestly, I'd just test on Steam Deck (performance, recent libs) and Debian (desktop experience, older libs) and that's it.
They also need to fix any exploits they find, which means they probably need Linux devs.
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You don't have to support all distros anymore. Just take whatever windows build and test it with Proton.
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Sure, but things work differently under the hood on Linux vs Windows, so they still need to validate every build. That means QA resources every release (and they release often), as well as development efforts to patch any Linux-specific exploits.
If supporting Linux doesn't bring in more money than other dev efforts, it's not worth it.
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Proton with what? Stable or experimental? DXVK or Wine3D? X11 or Wayland? Nvidia closed source or open source?
That's just what I came up with. There are probably a few more of these questions. Even Proton alone is not an easy target.
Especially if you want some low-level anticheat. And you know, if they have one platform that is easier to cheat, cheaters will all use that platform.
I don't know about you, but playing with tons of cheaters doesn't seem like a lot of fun to me.
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I've tried running fortnite on Linux . It installed fine started to play and then I get booted out because of the anti cheat . I believe the game would run fine if the anti cheat supported Linux .
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Most games that work on Steam Deck aren't technically Linux-compatible and therefore have no "Linux support" needed. Proton has come very very far, and most games are running the Windows exe through Steam using Proton.
In fact, I've played several games that do have native Linux support, and they still play better using the Windows version through Proton. On my Steam Deck, and on my shitty non-gaming laptop.
So no, they don't have to support anything new.
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Exactly. Making the game WINE-compatible is not the same thing as committing to support. In reality, the only thing stopping WINE from working is Epic Anti-Cheat and the absurd thing about this is that Epic already gave EAC a WINE-compatibility mode -- they're just actively choosing not to turn it on.
What Tim's really saying is this:
I don't want our flagship game to be used as a way to highlight Steam's better Linux support, so the game won't come to Linux until EGS on Linux is at parity. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense for us to bother doing that right now because the Linux usershare is too small to matter.
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Just release it as an unsupported "beta". The Linux users will figure out any issues and give higher quality bug reports.
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The only thing stopping Fortnite from running on Linux is the anticheat. The anticheat it uses it made by Epic, and has a specific option for WINE compatibility.
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I'm going to do a hard disagree here - they don't have to support Linux, just add compatibility in terms of anti-cheat for Linux. Proton is likely good enough to run the game itself but the anti-cheat sees Linux and just craps itself.
They don't even have to provide support - League of Legends runs on Linux if you install the game using community scripts and custom proton, and while the client runs poorly nobody spams the Riot Games support about how the "Linux version" client doesn't work the well because people understand that it's a community effort. Riot themselves have only made a statement saying how they'll try not to break the game for Linux users, and that's pretty much it.
League of Legends is a massively popular game as well, yet Riot barely has to do anything to maintain it on Linux, let community fix issues that come up, let community provide support as it's their tools.
And while I do understand that porting an anti-cheat to be more friendly to another operating system isn't an easy task (such as for Rust, where they tried to make the anti-cheat compatible with Linux but it introduced other issues so it got shelved), I think you're vastly overstating the amount of areas a company has to cover for a game to be playable on Linux.
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There's a difference though.
If the game doesn't work for (some or all) Linux users, that's not a big problem from Epic's POV. They'll lose a couple users that wouldn't have been able to play the game without Linux support anyway.
But if the Anticheat faills on Linux, that is a completely different story. Then cheaters would all dual boot over to Linux to cheat all they want. That's now a problem for the whole game's user base and consequently for the publisher as well.
Something as low-level as an Anticheat would have to be rewritten almost from scratch to work on Linux and this one really needs to be tested with every possible permutation of installed relevant software. Because if one combination is found where it doesn't work, you can be sure that the day after every cheater will be running this config.
(Just to check, do you have a background in game development and/or low-level Windows/Linux programming? I got all of that and I can tell you, nothing that looks easy from the outside is actually easy. I think you are vastly underestimating how much work goes into something until it "just works as expected")
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Dude, steam ships with a bunch of libraries enabling cross distro support. It ain't that complicated https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/blob/main/docs/container-runtime.md
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To be honest.... Yes it's that complicated. I've read that, Apparently valve had to spent massive ressource to figure out the load order of librairies and what to include for the steam runtime.
Granted, all they made is open source iirc. But it was a massive pita
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Did you read the second line of my post?
The code changes aren't the issue.
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It's more that epic have a competing store and Tim doesn't want to do anything that might help steam gain more traction.
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If it can be made to run via Steam, then they only need to support it as far as getting it installed in Steam. Either Proton or native, it can be made an invisible issue from the user perspective. They have made a choice not to do so.
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EA/Respawn somehow haven't had a problem with doing that with Apex legends.
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Apparently, their cost calculation is different. Also, Fortnite has about 50x active users compared to Apex Legends. That also changes a lot.
Sweeny said it doesn't make business sense for them and if it will make sense in the future, they will support Linux.
I'm pretty sure that someone who does know their business figures and frequently has to justify them to shareholders has a better overview about what makes business sense for them than anyone of us.
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Does it have to support every permutation or just a standard one like SteamOS?
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It feels like none of the replies to you actually read your comment. I appreciate you taking the time to offer up possible explanations with examples. Thank you!
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Except he's completely wrong because containers work specifically to solve the problem of deploying across different configurations. Valve already figured this out a decade ago with the steam runtime. That's why I can run a relatively obscure OS like Bazzite and nearly my entire library of AAA just works like it would on any other distro. You can run a container across hundreds of thousands of different configurations, it doesn't matter.
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Yeah, pretty much all answers are "You are wrong, the code change is easy".
Kinda sad that people don't make it even to the first line.
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Needs more programmers in order to check the AC checkbox, can't afford that.
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If only they had the funds for just a few more programmers, but alas, they barely survive off their niche title as is.
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it's just one checkbox in your fudging EAC. Why can so many windows only multiplayer games be played with EAC under Linux but not Fortnät?
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It is literally impossible for a game having kernel access not to be malware.
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I hate that the solution for them is to try to lock down users' own machines rather than trying to secure their own servers with server side anticheat
Goes against the whole philosophy of never trusting the clientside
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Hackers will always find a way. Bad players always try to appear better than they are. Welcome to humanity.
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Because fuck you, that's why
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28 Sept 2023 — We are laying off around 830 employees, or 16% of jobs.
hmm...
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"The Linux Problem" = "Not enough people using it for us to care"
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That's a public line. It's BS. Sweeny has been actively trying to torpedo gaming on Linux for YEARS. I don't know if it's just "Steam is good for Valve so it's bad for me", or if it goes deeper than that, but it's obvious in the last decade of behaviour.
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IDK, Unreal Engine runs on Linux, can export to Linux, and the Unreal Tournament games are released on Linux.
I really don't think he hates Linux, I believe him that he didn't see a financial point in supporting it for their games. People seem willing to use Windows to play their games, so there's not a strong financial incentive to support another platform.
If you want Sweeney to change his mind, get more people to use Linux exclusively. Personally, I prefer to ignore him.
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Sadly he didn’t clarify why it’s the Linux being problem here. If there are any technical obstacles, why can’t he say something’s too broken on the Linux side of things so that community or Valve could fix it?
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He means Linux problem as in: not enough players to justify supporting it, while those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports
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while those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports
And we have other developers saying that according to their metrics, most bugs linux players report are cross-platform and it's only unbalanced because we're the only people who actually bother to report bugs.
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those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports
Those bug reports are often real bugs that affect other platforms too.
https://www.pcgamer.com/indie-dev-finds-that-linux-users-generate-more-better-bug-reports/
Only 3 of the roughly 400 bug reports submitted by Linux users were platform specific, that is, would only happen on Linux.
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You mention bug reports as if they care to fix bugs in the first place.
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For that one game. There may be more games experiencing this but the 70% number I've seen is from one developer so far.
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Bullshit, he means Linux problem as in: "My main competitor is heavily invested in turning gaming on Linux into a viable platform."
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He did in the next sentence. There's not enough players on Linux to justify it.
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Apex Legends works fine on my Steam Deck. It's awesome now that there's cross progression now finally across Steam, Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo. I had progress across all of them and it's all together in one account now.
I really enjoyed the last season of Fortnite. The OG season where they brought back the style and gameplay of how Fortnite was when it first launched its Battle Royale mode. The new season is very gimmicky and I don't like it. But my younger brothers and cousins love it. It would be amazing to be able to play with them on Steam Deck. If Apex can do it, so should Fortnite.
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What if, and hear me out on this one, Epic Games really just love closed platforms for the built-in DRM of "secret sauce" and binary blobs to protect their intellectual property, even if the Steam Deck now has a TPM 2.0 equivalent. In fact, they would rather deprive the user of as much agency as possible to retain most of the control.
That might be a tinfoil hat take, but I stand by it.
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If they do think that - and I absolutely do not claim you are wrong - Then it's through ignorance. Developers can just as easily distribute compiled binaries for linux as they can for Windows, and even encrypt them if that's what they want to do.
Because linux itself is free and open, it doesn't mean you can't run commercial software on it without it being ripped off. I mean, my work pays many tens of thousands of pounds for commercial software running on Linux, and it's not just licencing that stops it being spread.
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Am I the only one that doesn't actually give a fuck if fortnite is on steam deck or not.?
Hell I'm happier with it not.
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It's more that having a game like that support linux would do a ton to quiet the "You can't game on Linux" crowd.
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Fortnite what? Isn't that the crack the 12 year old video gamer nerds smoke?
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I have no interest in it whatsoever, and I've banned my kids from playing it because I think it's predatory.
That said, I wish it was supported in Linux because that would likely instead Linux marketshare, which makes it more attractive to support for other studios, which means more working games on my platform of choice.
I don't care if Fortnite falls off a cliff and destroys itself, but I do care if it works on Linux.
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tim sweeney is a fuckwit. all directors need to have their salaries reduced to ordinary worker level. if they do not want the job, then give the job to an ordinary worker.
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That's just pity excuse and everyone knows it
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fyi you can play fortnite in a single gpu passthrough win10 vm on linux if you configure your vm to hide the hypervisor status.
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Epic games has its own store: its competing. There is no way they want to support the steamdeck right now. Same goes for xbox/Activision in a lot of ways and anything they're doing for the time being is just a way to sedate the law makers that objected to M$ activision acquisition.
Going to add that Epic Games blaming engineering headcount is a BS measure to distract from it too. They just got done suing Google. They absolutely want every part of the bottom line they can grab. Many companies have cut/are cutting programming staff to hedge bets they will be fully replaced if not mostly replaced in 5-10 years.
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There are tens of Millions on steam, what a dish
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Dude has a long history of being completely clueless.
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His market is 12 year olds on iPads with their parents credit cards. I don't think he's being clueless about that part
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But in another interview said that they will never support Linux because he thinks that's not possible to detect cheaters (although IMHO they should be detected server side, otherwise it's a cat&mouse game)
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Lmao fuck tim swinehog
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Not enough engineer lol They also don't have enough people working in ethics too.
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Sweeney is just being diplomatic here. I dont think he ever wants to support Linux
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Didn't they drop Linux support on some stuff when the deck got announced?
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no idea. As far as I know it's never worked on linux
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Might as well ask Nintendo if the next Pokemon game will be released on Steam Deck and PS5.
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He’s a sassy mother fucker ain’t he?
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Sniff Sniff
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I love Lemmy, but it's quickly becoming a vacuum chamber of blind hate for certain people and topics.
While yah, some of that statement is bs. Not all of it is false.
Shit like "JusT ENabLE PRoTon!" Is ridiculously simplistic and not how anything works. Otherwise every game everywhere would just do it.
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It is well known that Tim Sweeney has an unfounded hate for Linux in general and routinely makes up lies to support his idiotic views.
Especially in the case of a game like Fortnite, which uses EAC, it would require enabling a checkbox and recompiling once to make it compatible with proton, which in itself is a rather unnecessary measure imposed by Epic.
So no, it's not simplistic, it's literally how it would work in this case. As demonstrated by the countless other games which use EAC and did just that.
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I think in this thread we've both proven your point about echo chambers on Lemmy... People on here do not seem to realize that 2.5-3% of all desktops is not a great market to get into and that the vast majority of those 2.5% are not even interested in playing the damn game. I also find it funny that so many people on here seem to hate Epic Games saying they would never buy anything from yet they are still very angry they don't support Linux, like it would affect them.
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Agreed.
However, Fortnite makes so much money that it wouldn't be a hardship at all for them to do it. It may not be as profitable as other things they could do, but I think it would be a good gesture.
But Epic really doesn't benefit if the Deck succeeds, especially since they don't have a store there. It doesn't really hurt them that much though, but they have no reason to facilitate Deck adoption.
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Except if they did enable Fortnite on Deck... As the game is not on steam, people who want to play it would be encouraged to install the epic store on their Decks (which IS possible, and already something people do to play other games from the Epic store on Deck), which would give Epic an in on SteamDeck.
Enabling EACs proton support for Fortnite would be a means to get their foot in the door with Deck players, but you're saying they wont do it because they don't have a foot in with Deck players?
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