Easy Anti-Cheat now supports the Steam Deck
The update means Apex Legends, Dead By Daylight, and Halo multiplayer should all work on the Steam Deck at launch.
Valve's made it clear that it wants every game on Steam to be playable on the Steam Deck at launch, and one of the few major obstacles to that goal has been anti-cheat technologies that only work on Windows. That problem has now been at least partially solved—Epic, which bought Easy Anti-Cheat back in 2018, announced on Thursday that it's added support for both Linux and Mac OS.
And it gets better: Easy Anti-Cheat doesn't just offer native Linux support now, but also support for Wine and Proton, the compatibility layers used to run Windows applications on Linux. Proton is what Valve is using to make the entire Steam library playable on the Steam Deck, even though relatively few games have native Linux ports.
"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," the update reads.
Epic made Easy Anti-Cheat a free service this year, meaning we're likely to see more of it in future online games. But it's already a pretty big name—here are some of the Steam games that should now be playable on the Steam Deck at launch, assuming anti-cheat was the only thing holding them back.
- Apex Legends
- Black Desert Online
- Dauntless
- Dead By Daylight
- Fall Guys
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection
- Hunt: Showdown
- Knockout City
- Paladins
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2