Epic Games Brings Anti-Cheat Software to Linux and Mac

Epic Games has announced the availability of its free Easy Anti-Cheat software on Linux and macOS as part of the Epic Online Services platform meant to facilitate cross-platform play.

Many online titles rely on some kind of anti-cheat system to combat the use of wall hacks, aimbots, and other game-breaking software that gives players advantages over their peers. Refusing to install the anti-cheat software can preclude someone from playing the game at all.

That system works out well on platforms where anti-cheat software is readily available. There haven’t been many efforts to introduce those systems on Linux or macOS, however, which is part of the reason why many gamers have to dual-boot Windows to play their favorite titles.

Epic’s working to change that. The company made Easy Anti-Cheat free to Windows game developers in June, and now it’s making the software freely available to devs working on games for Linux and macOS, too. So it should be easier than ever for all three platforms to coexist.

Special attention was paid to the Linux port. Epic said Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck handheld, which runs software based on the Arch Linux distribution, will support Easy Anti-Cheat. It also said the anti-cheat software will play nicely with efforts to bring Windows games to Linux.

“To make it easy for developers to ship their games across PC platforms,” the company said in its announcement, “support for the Wine and Proton compatibility layers on Linux is included. 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.”

Wine has been the method of choice for Linux gamers looking to play Windows-only titles for years. Valve built on top of that foundation with Proton, which is supposed to automatically handle many of the fiddly bits involved with playing these games, but only if they’re on Steam.

More information about Easy Anti-Cheat’s expansion to Linux—including the Steam Deck—and macOS is available via the Epic Online Services Developer Portal.