Whenever someone says that gaming on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ PCs is horrible, I always take exception. I’ve written first-hand experience that shows this just isn’t the case.
There is one roadblock though; Anticheat. Today, Epic Games and Qualcomm have announced a collaborative effort to upgrade Easy Anti Cheat to support Snapdragon X later this year.
“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. “
Unsurprisingly, the first title to go live is also the biggest. It’s also the one that makes the most sense. Epic Games’ megahit, Fortnite, will be going live with Snapdragon X support for Easy Anti Cheat later this year. There’s no more specific information than that on when, but it’s in progress.
This is huge for a number of reasons, not least one of the most played games on the planet becoming available on Snapdragon X-powered PCs. Fortnite is traditionally one of the easier games to run on lower-powered hardware, so it’s a good fit.
It’s also, as Epic says, the perfect way to battle test that it actually works.
“Battle-testing Windows on Snapdragon anti-cheat support with Fortnite will help ensure smooth implementations in other games.”
Fortnite is, after all, a controlled test environment that Epic has the best access to. In addition to Fortnite, Epic will release an SDK update for other developers to add support into their own EAC implementations.
Gaming on Snapdragon X is, in some regards, akin to gaming on the Steam Deck. The two aren’t apples for apples, but both share an issue with anticheat software. Steam OS is based on Linux, and so Windows-based anticheat doesn’t just magically work.
The situation over there has improved a lot, despite holdouts, and the likes of Riot Games’ Vanguard, and Activision’s Ricochet, are unlikely to ever work on Linux due to their kernel-level activity.
Epic Games has been very proactive though and supports Steam Deck, and will soon support Snapdragon X for Windows. Whatever your feelings about the company, you cannot deny the effort the boffins there are putting in to open up gaming to as many folks as possible.
I’ve been really impressed with gaming performance on both the Snapdragon X Elite and the Snapdragon X Plus, both with and without using Microsoft’s Auto SR upscaler. Even being a first-gen product, the performance is there.
Lots of stars need to align, not least Qualcomm pushing regular graphics driver updates and Microsoft expanding support for Auto SR. But anticheat is a massive roadblock to playing some of the most popular games on the planet, so the impact here is real. It has to start somewhere, and the ball is now officially rolling.