Epic Games has opened a Preview of a rebuilt Epic Games Launcher on Windows, macOS and, for the first time, Linux, and says it is reworking Easy Anti-Cheat so Fortnite can eventually run on Linux through the same client.
The company says it vibe coded the new Epic Games Launcher to start faster and respond more quickly than the current one, with a fresh look. The first release is deliberately thin: Epic Games calls it a speedboat rather than a yacht, and the one commerce feature it highlights is a shopping cart.
Epic lists faster cold starts, quicker movement between library and store, and a lighter load while it idles in the background. Party and voice chat now spans Fortnite, the Epic Games Store and the Epic Games app. Each game gets its own page showing status, recent activity, details and play controls, and players can pull their PC libraries into one view. Collections sit beside the library, the top bar can be customized with favorite games and apps, and search filters results as you type.
A downloads panel reports download, read and write speeds and separates active, queued, scheduled and failed transfers. Purchases, installed games, cloud saves and progress carry over from the current Epic Games Launcher. Epic recommends that competitive players and developers working on a live project stay on the current launcher during the Preview, and routes bug reports through a Send Feedback button in the app.
The Linux client is the structural change. Epic says Fortnite will reach Linux through the launcher only after Easy Anti-Cheat is rebuilt and the company has worked through security requirements with distribution maintainers, a step it expects to reach once enough maintainers are on board. Epic also plans to hand those anti-cheat improvements to other developers so their games can follow. It gave no date for either the full launcher or Fortnite on Linux. If distribution maintainers sign on, the anti-cheat work could matter well beyond one game.
