Epic Games has grown into a global video game powerhouse thanks to the Unreal Engine and internally developed video games such as the insanely popular free-to-play title Fortnite. Since the breakout success of the battle royale game, the American-based developer hasn't wasted any time expanding its empire.
In a recent news post over on the official website, it was revealed the company would be making a large set of cross-platform game services free to all developers in 2019. These services were originally built for Fortnite and have already been thoroughly tested by 200 million players across seven different platforms. Here's exactly what the company had to say:
Throughout 2019, we’ll be launching a large set of cross-platform game services originally built for Fortnite, and battle-tested with 200,000,000 players across 7 platforms. These services will be free for all developers, and will be open to all engines, all platforms, and all stores. As a developer, you’re free to choose mix-and-match solutions from Epic and others as you wish.
All services will be operated in a privacy-friendly, GDPR-compliant manner.
The service launch will begin with a C SDK encapsulating our online services, together with Unreal Engine and Unity integrations. We’ll start with a core set of features and expand over time.
These service features will cover Switch and include cross-platform logging, friends, presence, profile and entitlements (Q2-3 2019). There'll also be cross-platform voice communication (Q3 2019), parties and matchmaking, data storage and cloud-saving for all-platforms (Q3-4 2019).
Epic says these are just the first steps in helping develop the next-generation of socially-connected games.
What do you think about this? Are you a fan of cross-platform online services? Do you like the idea of more socially-connected gaming experiences? Tell us below.
[source unrealengine.com]
Comments 12
Ok, now this is Epic.
This is only the beginning.
That is really cool of them!
Nice! I am liking how a lot of games are open to the idea of cross platform (heck indie developers are really open to it). That's really cool.
Soon enough cross platform will be a norm to non-exclusive games.
Pretty big stuff to say the least... I'm interested.
These guys are good business people. Really impressive for them to do this. Thumbs up!
I hate Fortnite, but fair play to them for doing this.
Never got into Fortnite, but I love Epic because of UT and their Unreal Engine services. So awesome they are providing this!
Someone let Sony know! They seem to be having a few troubles over there, with cross-network between consoles available in just one game from the entire PS4 library
...I'm sure they're not just being stubborn, or intentionally anti-consumer, or anything like that - and that it's entirely coincidental that the one game they do allow cross-play in just so happens to be the most popular game on the planet - the sooner they can get with the times, the better it'll be for all of us! ()
Sony: "We'd love to support this, but the technology just isn't there yet; you wouldn't understand."
@SwitchVogel isn't that the excuse Nintendo gives?
Good move by Epic to open access to all platforms and engines capable of hooking to their services. They could've restricted it to just their engine and forced developers to use Unreal and earn more that way.
Truly epic, no pun intended.
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