One of the Steam Deck’s biggest hurdles just disappeared: EAC has come to Linux

On Sep 24, 2021

Valve promised it would work with anti-cheat software makers EAC and BattlEye to ensure some of the most popular games will run on its upcoming Steam Deck Linux-based gaming handheld, and one of those companies is now officially on board — Epic Games announced today that its Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) now supports Linux and Mac. Not only that, it’s specifically set up to work with the Proton and Wine compatibility layers that Valve’s relying on to bring Windows games to the Deck.

While developers would still need to patch their games, this immediately means some of the most popular games on Steam are now theoretically within reach, including Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight, and War Thunder, which are all among the top 25 games on Steam. Other popular EAC games include 7 Days to Die, Fall Guys, Black Desert, Hunt: Showdown, Paladins, and the Halo Master Chief Collection.

Some key games will still be missing until or unless other anti-cheat providers sign on, though: PUBG, Destiny 2, and Rainbow Six Siege are also among the top 25, and all use the rival BattlEye anti-cheat software. So does Epic’s own Fortnite, for that matter, but Epic also hasn’t brought Fortnite or the Epic Games Store to Linux desktops. Epic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about that.

In an email to The Verge, BattlEye CEO Bastian Suter confirmed the software will be compatible with the Steam Deck, saying “the first game might start using it soon.” However, it will be up to individual developers to enable support.

Epic does suggest it’s easy for developers to patch their EAC games: “Starting with the latest SDK release, developers can activate anti-cheat support for Linux via Wine or Proton with just a few clicks in the Epic Online Services Developer Portal,” writes Epic.

You can find ProtonDB’s list of the top games that do and don’t work via compatibility layer right here, as well as current lists of games that use EAC and BattlEye at the links embedded in this sentence.

Epic made EAC a free service earlier this year.

Update September 24th, 9:53AM ET: Added comment from BattlEye CEO on the status of Steam Deck support.