Will Fortnite run on Steam Deck? Epic Game CEO answers in a series of tweets; Check here

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has confirmed that players will not be able to run Fortnite on Valve's Steam Deck directly. This might disappoint a lot of Fortnite fans, especially those who were looking forward to enjoying the battle royale game on Steam Deck. Additionally, the Steam Deck release date is right around the corner, as the device is about to be launched on February 25, 2022. Keep reading for more details. 

A Twitter user by the name @Stormy178 asked Tim Sweeney whether Epic Games has any plans to update Fortnite and make the Proton/Wine compatible with EAC and BattlEye anti-cheat on Linux. As a reply to this question, Sweeney says denies that there will not be any such updates in Fortnite. However, the CEO also says Epic Games is trying to maximize easy anti-cheat compatibility with Steam Deck. For those catching up, Proton is a compatibility layer for Microsoft Windows games, that enables them to run on Linux-based operating systems. And since Fortnite is compatible with Linux builds, it should be able to run on Valve's Steam Deck. 

Tim Sweeney replies to a series of tweets, explaining why Fortnite will not support Steam Deck

In yet another tweet, a user @Blastermaster77 asked Tim Sweeney as to why can't Fortnite be compatible with Proton and run on Valve Steam Deck. In reply, Sweeney says that Epic does not have enough confidence whether it would be able to combat cheating at scale under a wide array of kernel configurations, including custom ones. However, the chain of tweets and replies does not stop here. 

Another user @leanuxguy replied to Sweeney's tweet about not being confident to deal with cheating, saying that the "CEO does not trust his own product." Sweeney felt the urge to reply to this comment and said that "With regard to anti-cheat on Linux platform supporting custom kernels and the threat model to a game of Fortnite's size, YES THAT'S EXACTLY RIGHT!" While the yelling tweet did not end the conversation among Twitter users and the CEO, it led people to come up with multiple theories as to why Fortnite would not be supported on Steam Deck. 

Some users believe that Epic Games does not want their game to run on their rival's gaming device. Sweeney also replied to one of such threads, writing that Epic would be happy to put Fortnite on Steam. Adding to it, Sweeney says "We wouldn't be happy to give Steam 20-30 per cent of its revenue for the privilege." To sum it up, Steam Deck supports all the software-related requirements by Fortnite, but it looks like Sweeney and Epic Games do not want to make the game available for the platform.