Steam Deck will support games with Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat software
Things are looking brighter for Valve’s Steam Deck and its potential game library. On Friday, the company announced titles that depend on Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) software can now run on the portable. Valve said adding Steam Deck support to titles that utilize EAC is “a simple process.” Developers won’t need to update their SDK version or make other time-consuming changes. With Valve adding BattlEye support through its Proton compatibility layer for Linux late last year, the company said, “this means the two largest anti-cheat services are now easily supported on Proton and Steam Deck.” In practice, that should mean more of your favorite games will work with Valve’s handheld when it launches next month.
Of course, it’s one thing for Valve to make it easy for developers to ensure their games run without issue on Steam Deck and a completely separate thing for them to do the necessary work to ensure compatibility. To that point, when Valve announced BattlEye support in December, it said all developers had to do was contact the company to enable the software for their title. And yet it’s still unclear whether some of the most popular multiplayer games on Steam that utilize BattlEye and EAC, including titles like Rainbow Six Siege and PUBG, will work on day one of Steam Deck’s availability. Valve has tried to address some of that uncertainty with its recently announced Deck Verified program. This week, Valve added 67 titles to the database, 39 of which should run without issue on the device.