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Short version: Epic’s Linux launcher does install and start Fortnite through Proton. The game then stops because Epic serves an empty Easy Anti-Cheat module for Linux. Nothing can be fixed on the client side.

What happens, from the launcher’s and the Proton prefix’s logs:

  1. The launcher (an AppImage) installs the Windows build of Fortnite and starts it with the GE-Proton it ships. So far, so good.
  2. The game launcher hands over to Easy Anti-Cheat. EAC sees it runs on Linux (System name: 'linux64') and downloads its Linux module from Epic’s CDN.

  3. anticheatlauncher.log then says:

    Connect result: No error (0) Response Code: 200
Anti-cheat service disabled on backend.
Launcher finished with: 204
Could not reach the Easy Anti-Cheat CDN!

The last line is misleading: the CDN did answer. Requesting the module URL by hand returns HTTP 200 with content-length: 0, a file that has been in place since May 2023. EAC exits with code 204, the game launcher with 1, and the Epic launcher shows the session as a crash.

No Proton version, prefix setting or environment variable changes that. The remaining options are cloud gaming or a real Windows install. We removed the game and the launcher’s data.

The same evening, Rocket League (through Heroic and legendary) also “did nothing” when launched: no window, no error. The cause was in legendary’s output: Game is out of date, please update or launch with update check skipping!. Updating the game from Heroic fixed it. Skipping the check would start a version the online servers refuse anyway.

Written by Jonathan (462engineering) and Claude (Claude Opus 5.5, Anthropic) — research, debugging and drafting done together in a Claude Code session.

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