I really don’t like Epic personally, but this is still pretty huge. Linux and SteamOS have come a long way. CEO Tim Sweeney has always been very negative towards the idea of Linux support, so Epic changing that stance would suggest that Linux/SteamOS has finally become too big of a market to ignore.
Who wants to bet that it will get to minimum viable product, be shoved out the door, and get basically no support until such time that Timmy goes “Well we aren’t getting enough ROI on Linux” and bin the Linux version completely ignoring that they aren’t even getting purchases on the windows client?
heroic: i’ve been here the whole time
Heroic is a great option, and will likely remain most people’s preferred way to play Epic games on Linux/SteamOS. After all, a lot of windows users prefer heroic there as well due to the bloat/slowness of the official Epic launcher.
That said, official support is always good. It both represents that Linux is growing and a viable alternative to windows, guarantees better support from games on the platform in the future, and pressures other companies to also support Linux.
Basically this (and GoG adding support) are big deals, even if it’s not because we really needed their official support to have a good way to play their games.
I have not needed to use heroic yet, but I keep meaning to install it so I can see what it is all about.
Heroic is more than just an epic games launcher fyi, it’s pretty much a full replacement for lutris (which I have stopped using due to the llm code shitshow)
So far I have only used Lutris to install the sims 4 for my wife on my old Lenovo legion laptops. I have not kept up with the program.
I had no idea about llm with it.
Competition is good for consumers.
There’s two competitions here, windows vs Linux, and steam vs epic.
Of those two, I consider windows vs Linux the more important competition for consumers. And Linux is the underdog there, so I think Linux doing better will help more people than any other result of this.
So the question becomes, is this good or bad for Linux? More official support for Linux is good obviously, but also Valve funds a lot of open source projects and generally invests a lot of money in Linux (and I’m very doubtful that Epic will do anything similar). So arguably Valve doing better and having a larger monopoly might do more good in the long run, if it helps counteract the windows monopoly. Of course, that would only matter if Epic on Linux actually dents Steam’s market share in any meaningful way, which seems unlikely.
I don’t like Sweeny, and don’t trust him. I don’t want him interested in Linux even if people do use his service and think it would be a benifit if it worked on linux.
Sweeny is always trying to get ahead of the curve on things, and will sue and try to cause damage to get his way. He hates monopolies like steam and google because he his envious and thinks he should be the monopoly, and every move he has made has been to selfishly reach that goal.
I don’t know what he has planned but I can see him running some narative similar to his google play legal fight to try to throw around his power and take control, rather than just making a decent product. So to me I see Sweeny interested in Linux finally, I am trying to think what kind of lawsuit is he planning, or is he going to try to instil his own Linux kernal anti cheat spyware, etc, etc.
He only sued google for the 30% cut they took on fortnight, and though he deserved all the money to himself, while at the same time is trying to build his monopoly the epic playstore. Hes beefing with steam right now about Ai disclosure because he doesn’t want the games made with unreal engine to be labled as Ai slop due to his newest Ai update for unreal.
If everytime he opened his mouth he didn’t shit on Linux, shit on anti Ai, shit on open source, and directly support csam I would maybe believe him. Its like everytime he opens his mouth he aims to say the dumbest thing possible.
That’s one program I certainly don’t care about coming to Linux.
On a personal level, I also don’t like Epic and Tim Sweeney, but recognize how important this is of a change. Tim said in the past they don’t care bout the Steam Deck, because it is not selling well. They will care if it is selling in the tens of millions. (I can’t link to the original Twitter/X post, so I rely on correct quoting from other places.)
“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.”
- Tim Sweeney
Thank god. more mainstream support is a good thing. Hopefully if fortnite comes to linux there wont be a reason to ever use windows again for many people.
