A large segment of the gaming popularity are aware that, at one point at least, Fortnite was one of the biggest IPs on the planet. In fact, it was one of the most played video games of 2020, beating the likes of Overwatch, GTA5, and The Witcher 3. With Valve just a couple more weeks away from unleashing its Steam Deck handheld system to the world, many would be forgiven for thinking that Epic Games' battle royale money spinner would be a shoe-in for the portable PC. As it turns out, that may not be the case.

According to a recent report from Gamespot, which references a tweet from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, Fortnite is not going to be updated to make it compatible with the Steam Deck. The post is in response to someone on Twitter who asked Sweeney outright whether the game would be getting an upgrade to make Proton, the system that makes Linux woth with Windows-based applications, compatible so it could run on Valve's upcoming device.

RELATED: Fortnite Announces Latest Creative Mayhem Event ‘Love is in the Air’

The main reason, it seems, is that Sweeney does not "have confidence" that the company would be able to manage any online cheating within the game on such a large scale. Steam Deck recently became compatible with the main anti-cheat software, such as Easy Anti-Cheat and BattleEye. Prior to that, there were concerns that online games would struggle to perform on the handheld system, given that there were compatibility issues between it and anti-tamper and anti-piracy tools. In essence, it seems that the Epic Games founder does not feel certain that, with 60 million players, the studio would be able to "combat cheating" when compared to other online titles that have a smaller player base.

In which case, the Valve device won't be able to run Fortnite natively. However, there are ways around that. Currently, the Steam Deck is compatible with more than 100 games, which should run from day one, but the system does function as a PC, which means it can be customized. With an open source design, people can install games outside the Steam library, so it's possible that it could be made compatible with it, just not officially.

After initially being delayed by two months, with it originally scheduled for a Christmas 2021 launch, the Steam Deck is finally arriving on February 25. Whether it will revolutionize the handheld gaming industry remains to be seen, but developers have been praising the device and while Fortnite is not being updated to make it compatible, there will almost certainly be a way around that.

The Steam Deck is still on track for release on February 25.

MORE: A History of Valve's Hardware Attempts Before the Steam Deck

Source: Gamespot