Epic announces remade Linux anti-cheat support (yay!) and a game launcher coded by Vibe (Boo!)

Following an announcement earlier this week that Epic committed to the future of AI development, Epic made two announcements today. The first is a new preview game launcher that they proudly claim to have coded, and the second is a complete plan towards a Linux anti-cheat solution with their games, which will help them expand their games. Fortnite to Linux-based systems. What a mix!

In a blog post todayEpic showed off its new preview version of its game launcher. “Programming is hard. So instead of doing that, we coded a new Epic Games launcher that is much faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look. This first version is light on features. Think of it as a speedboat, not a yacht! Although it does have advanced digital commerce technology, like a shopping cart.”

If Epic hadn’t directly stated that the client itself was mood-coded, the page itself for refreshing would have been a great flag. It has all the creators of “one of these projects” (if I see another website that has letters with a gradient from pink to blue or strangely loaded code effects I’m going to scream).

Points for honesty, I suppose, but as with most communications from companies the size of Epic, gloating about not doing work doesn’t make me enjoy the work, even if I accept the sad reality of coding AI at these companies. Epic isn’t some guy on Reddit or

Although I have many games through the Epic Store for work, I don’t use Epic Game Launcher much, and instead I’ve opted for Heroic Games Launcher, which unifies my Epic and GoG games under one launcher, with the ability to add these games to Steam, which I actually use. But for the sake of journalism, I installed their new preview client on Bazzite, which supports Linux. I can confirm that it booted quickly and was a buggy mess, which makes sense given that it’s a pre-release version of an ambiance-coded Linux client.

On top of that, Epic announced something much more interesting: expanding and improving Linux support for Epic’s Easy Anticheat. For people who don’t play Linux regularly, anti-cheat is one of the biggest problems with adopting Linux, in part because many Windows-based solutions require a kernel driver. Games may run fine through Proton, but without a way to secure an anti-cheat solution, entire games remain unplayable online on Linux. Easy Anticheat has an opt-in Linux client, but the implementation has been patchy and spotty at best.

“To close the gap with Linux, we are rebuilding our Linux anti-cheat implementation into EAC Linux v2,” Epic wrote. “We will bring the level of protection closer to that of Windows, in the very near term, by using existing Linux features, including the signed kernel, signed kernel modules, and secure boot with attestation. These requirements build on the work that distribution maintainers are already doing, and the more distributions that meet these requirements by default, the less players will need to modify their configuration to play.

The blog goes on to explain the different technologies that Epic uses to achieve complete anti-cheat without a kernel driver, as well as the steps they are taking to reach out to members of the Linux community and host a panel with Fedora project lead Jet Spaleta. Their FAQ also mentions that while the Steam Deck does not have the features required to support their anti-cheat solution, they are actively in conversation with Valve on the topic.

Epic lays off 1,000 people, ends support for game modes after making Fortnite more expensive

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This is the kind of thing that Epic should dedicate time and resources, instead of bragging about the flavor coding of a currently broken launcher. The reason people have relatively positive feelings toward Valve is that they act like Linux developers, slowly but systematically introducing open source quality of life features into their products without making too much of a fuss. If Epic wants the same kind of goodwill that Valve currently has, then they need to put in the time. And I hope they end up focusing more on the currently intractable problems in Linux instead of just bragging about how much work their agents do for them.