Epic CEO explains why Fortnite isn’t on the Steam Deck

Epic Games has spent the last few years making a massive name for itself, going from a ‘mere’ engine developer to one of the biggest game publishers around, releasing arguably the most popular game currently (Fortnite) and even opening up their own PC store. Despite this, Fortnite isn’t available on any PC Linux platforms, including the Steam Deck. Epic’s CEO has now explained why.

In an interview conducted by The Verge following the conclusion of the company’s most recent trial against Google (in which Epic won), CEO Tim Sweeney was asked “Why is Fortnite still not playable on Steam Deck?”, to which he responded:

“If we only had a few more programmers. It's the Linux problem. I love the Steam Deck hardware. Valve has done an amazing job there; I wish they would get to tens of millions of users, at which point it would actually make sense to support it.”

With the sheer and seemingly-endless amount of resources that Epic throws at Fortnite, it is surprising to see that they still have not released a Linux compatible version.

That said, based on Sweeney’s statement it is clear that the reason they haven’t done so yet is simple – it won’t make Epic as much money as they want.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Sweeney’s statement? Do you appreciate the relative candour or does it go against the ethos of art and accessibility? Let us know your thoughts down below.

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