A major drawback for online gaming on an Arm-based machine has been the lack of Easy Anti-Cheat support, which is necessary to play Fortnite and many other online-based games. Not for much longer, it seems, as Epic Games has just announced it's adding Windows on Snapdragon support to Easy Anti-Cheat later this year.
That's good news for anyone who's both a Fortnite fan and a Qualcomm-chip-enjoyer (via Ars Technica). Oh come on, there must be some of you out there. Anyway, Epic Games has made the announcement in a blog post, and it sounds like support is imminent for many other games, too, thanks to a forthcoming SDK release:
"We are working with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to add Windows on Snapdragon support to Epic Online Services Anti-Cheat, also known as Easy Anti-Cheat, and make Fortnite available for Windows on Snapdragon devices later this year. This will help developers bring more games to more devices.
"Hundreds of today’s multiplayer games—including Fortnite—rely on Easy Anti-Cheat to counter hacking and cheating in multiplayer PC games. In addition to releasing Windows on Snapdragon anti-cheat support for Fortnite we will bring this support to developers through an Epic Online Services SDK release. This will enable developers using Easy Anti-Cheat to bring this compatibility to their own games."
Good stuff. While Windows-on-Arm-based machines are widely available, game support has been a continual sticking point as Microsoft/Qualcomm's Prim emulation layer has been known to experience the odd issue, or even lack support entirely for certain games.
While that's likely to continue, it's good to know that multiplayer gaming will soon be much better supported thanks to Epic's endeavours, although an exact date for both Fortnite-on-Arm support and the SDK release has yet to be revealed.
Should you be considering a Windows Arm-based machine, Works on Windows on Arm has a searchable database of software and games with compatibility ratings, ensuring you go into your purchase forewarned and forearmed as to which will likely work well, and which will leave you adrift on the seas of poor emulation support.
So, it seems likely it won't be long before Arm fans are bouncing around the world of *checks notes* Athena, building walls and dressing as a *checks notes* Fabio Sparklemane. My, Fortnite really did pass me by, didn't it? Still, it's got all sorts of Lumen goodies on board these days, so perhaps I'll put some of my RTX 5070 Ti testing time towards it this weekend.
You'll see me there, dressed as a horse and wondering what's going on. A bit like my 28th birthday—but the less said about that, the better.
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