- Epic has made its Easy Anti-Cheat tool compatible with Windows on Arm
- This means online games that use the tool work with Arm-based laptops
- That includes Fortnite, which is going to be one of the first games to implement this support for Snapdragon X (Arm) chips
If you’ve got a Copilot+ laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X (Arm) processor that you also use for gaming duties, here’s some great news: one of the biggest stumbling blocks for gamers on Arm has now been banished.
As Thurrott.com reports, Epic has made good on its promise to make its Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) tool compatible with Windows on Arm (the version of Microsoft’s OS that’s installed on Copilot+ PCs with Arm chips, as opposed to AMD or Intel silicon).
The move comes with the new version of the Epic Online Services SDK (for game developers) which now boasts EAC compatibility to offer “secure multiplayer experiences on Arm-based Windows 11 devices”, as Epic notes.
EAC is used by some big-name online games to weed out problem players who are using various shady tricks or exploits, and the lack of compatibility with the anti-cheat system meant that those games didn’t work at all on Arm-based laptops.
Said games include Epic’s Fortnite among other online shooters (Apex Legends, PUBG, and more), as well as the likes of Elden Ring.
Analysis: the ball is now in the developers’ court
Epic previously promised that it was going to make EAC work with Windows on Arm back in March 2025, and what we see here is the necessary work being implemented in the mentioned SDK (software development kit).
However, that isn’t the end of this story – not quite. It’s now up to game developers to incorporate the support in their titles, and Epic is going to be on the ball itself in that respect when it comes to bringing support to Fortnite.
A Qualcomm spokesperson told Thurrott.com: “Fortnite will be among the first titles to take advantage of this compatibility, bringing one of the world’s most popular games to Snapdragon-powered laptops.”
At any rate, support is going to filter through gradually to a number of games – hopefully quite swiftly – and this will remove one of the black marks in the ‘against’ column for Arm-based laptops.
Those devices running Snapdragon X chips can make a good enough effort at running even more demanding games – recall the early days of being impressed at these notebooks running Baldur’s Gate 3 in 4K.
Being unable to play Easy Anti-Cheat games on these machines was a notable weakness, and particularly with Fortnite, given that this is a popular choice for laptop gamers (and not a demanding title), it was a shame to see it out of the grasp of those with Arm-based Copilot+ PCs – but that won’t be the case for much longer.
