Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has confirmed Fortnite won't be updated to run on the Steam Deck. However, that's not down to Epic's current rivalry with Valve, but Anti Cheat concerns.
Recently, a fan asked Sweeney the question on Twitter if Fortnite would be updated to run on Anti Cheat software for Linux, but this won't be the case. When asked to elaborate, Sweeney said:
We don’t have confidence that we’d be able to combat cheating at scale under a wide array of kernel configurations including custom ones.
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Fortnite Won’t Run Natively on Steam Deck
Fortnite might not be on Steam, though as an open system, Steam Deck can allow players to run games from other digital stores. Understandably though, these won't be optimised for the hardware, but it does mean games from the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store can run on the system.
Time will tell if Epic Games eventually updates Fortnite for the Steam Deck, though we wouldn't count on that anytime soon. In the meantime, handheld gamers can play Fortnite on Switch or Android, while everyone else can play it on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.