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Comment by xrd | Hacker News Reader

I was really proud that my kids (8,10,12) all have used linux for gaming for the last several years. Steam runs perfectly for most games.

And, they know how to to use "flatpak update" to update the sober runtime for Roblox (I know this is not steam, but it is an example of how well other things run on linux). I'm so proud (and ashamed they play Roblox, but choose your battles).

But, Fortnite.

I tried to run a Windows VM, but that was a poor substitute.

Is there an option for Fortnite on Linux?

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Fortnite might be a battle worth choosing. I wouldn't want to carve my children's gray matter into grooves of cosmetic microtransactions of psychological warfare.

I actually totally agree. This was because a friend who lives a thousand miles away also plays it (and his parents have different views on what Fortnite means). I'm sure gaming companies optimize for peer pressure effects, because that's so powerful.

...and yet they play ROBLOX, which is undoubtedly 100x worse.

We've been playing Fortnite by "streaming" from xbox cloud gaming (for free) over the last couple of months. For the most part it's worked great. Sessions are limited to one hour, resolution is relatively low, and depending on the day/time... there can be more than a little input lag.

But this truly was the one game my kids couldn't play from Linux that they wanted to.

Amazon prime gaming and GeForce Now also allow linking epic accounts to stream games. I've read GeForce now offers a free, somewhat limited tier as well... but we haven't tried it yet.

Is strange using a game streaming service from proper Linux-only gaming rigs... but I think that’s the only real option right now. :)

Fortnite is a problem because of kernel level anti-cheat, trying to get it work on Proton....will probably be a long time.

The solution is: buy a Playstation.

Yeah. Consoles should be consoles. It should be considered unacceptable for a general purpose computer to run kernel level DRM.

This is why I consider it a (security) feature that these anti-cheats don’t work on Linux.

What if you want to play with keyboard & mouse?

Connect keyboard & mouse to the console

Many PS5 games have keyboard and mouse support, Fortnite being one of course.

This really sucks... Fortnite is a must-have for many people (myself included).

The problem is DRM, so there is no good answer.

The problem is anti-cheat, not DRM.

Anti-cheat is effectively the same thing as DRM. Both are just ways for the software publisher to override the user's control of their machine.

DRM can work on Linux, it's just developers choose to not enabled support, and in some cases (Epic Games) actively update games so it won't work with Linux.

What would it even mean for DRM to not be able to work on Linux? Modules would have to disappear, source code would have to become unmodifiable, and Linux would have to remove anything related to rights/privledges/contexts, I suppose?

But yes - the problem is Epic doesn't target Linux with it, not that it would be infeasible for Epic to support playing Fortnite on Linux if they changed their minds.

Epic Anti-Cheat fully supports Linux[1]. I believe what the GP comment means is that the Fortnite publishers opted not to tick the “allow Linux” checkbox on the developer portal website.

There is probably more nuance behind that decision than I’m giving them credit for, but from a technical standpoint it’s just a checkbox.

[1] https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/game-services/anti-cheat/usin...

In full agreement. The problem for GP was never supposed to be highlighting a technical limitation, just the continued problem existing with that nonetheless.

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