Epic launching large set of cross-platform game services originally built for Fortnite for free

[Ghost]

Couldn't find a thread about this when I searched but feel free to lock if old.

At Epic, our goal is to help game developers succeed. 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.

• Cross-Platform Login, Friends, Presence, Profile, and Entitlements (coming Q2-Q3 2019 to PC, other platforms throughout 2019): Provides the core functionality for persistently recognizing players across multiple sessions and devices; identifying friends; and managing free and paid item entitlements. This will support all 7 major platforms (PC, Mac, iOS, Android, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch) to the full extent each platform allows per-title.
• PC/Mac Overlay API (coming Q3 2019): Provides a user interface for login, friends, and other features in a game-agnostic, engine-agnostic way.
• Cross-Platform Voice Comms (coming Q3 2019 to all platforms): Epic is building a new in-game voice communications service supporting all platforms, all stores, and all engines, which will be available for free. (For developers needing an immediately-available voice solution, check out Discord, Vivox, TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble.)
• Cross-Platform Parties and Matchmaking (coming Q3-4 2019 to all platforms)
• Cross-Platform Data Storage, Cloud-Saved Games (coming Q2 2019)
• Cross-Platform Achievements and Trophies (coming Q3 2019

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https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-2019-cross-platform-online-services-roadmap

 

[Flandy]

That's a long wait for those features :s

 

[ManaByte]

Fortnite's implementation of cross-platform progression AND play is the future of gaming. People need to adapt or perish. This is awesome for Epic to do. Hopefully games like Rocket League and Overwatch could make use of this stuff.

 

[Danzflor]

I'm glad we are finally on the page that if you game goes to multiple platforms, let the people choose where to play. Long will be the days where you can't play play Overwatch with your bro cause you have a PS4 and he has an Xbox. Bless Epic.

 

[zedox]

Great to hear...I hope this type of stuff happens with all platform holders. More interop!

 

[spam musubi]

While I haven't been a fan of the stuff they've done with their store so far, this is great. This is how they should attract devs to their platform.

 

[Barrel Cannon]

"Cross-Platform Parties and Matchmaking "
This is pretty damn fucking massive. Epic doing what Sony/MS/Nintendo aren't capable of doing alone.

m23

 

[jelly]

Do you need an Epic account to play Fortnite on consoles?

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Hope this goes places. So many games I would have double-dipped on if I were able to carry progress between PC and console. The lack of cross-play has been potential money lost (at least from me) for devs and platform holders alike.

 

[bsigg]

Do you need an Epic account to play Fortnite on consoles?

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Yes.

 

[Lant_War]

Fortnite's implementation of cross-platform progression AND play is the future of gaming. People need to adapt or perish. This is awesome for Epic to do. Hopefully games like Rocket League and Overwatch could make use of this stuff.

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Yup. It blew my mind how I could just plug a keyboard, a mouse and play against PC players.

 

[alosarjos]

"Cross-Platform Parties and Matchmaking "
This is pretty damn fucking massive. Epic doing what Sony/MS/Nintendo aren't capable of doing alone.

m23

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Oh man, can't wait to see the PS Network engineers who needed 4-5 years to allow nickname changes to work side by side with the guys who are still using friend codes.

 

[D.Dragoon]

Now that is a killer feature from Epic

 

[ManaByte]

Do you need an Epic account to play Fortnite on consoles?

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Yea, but it's free. You just create your account and link it to your console account. Start up Fortnite on whatever system you want to play it on, and all your progress is there.

 

[Tracygill]

Valve and Epic in an endless struggle to prove who can give away the most stuff for free.

 

[mephixto]

Hmmm I wonder If every publisher it's gonna implement this on their own games, imagine giving your console and pub credentials all the time you launch a game.

 

[Derrick01]

The cross platform stuff is nice and all but doesn't matter much if the consoles won't let it happen *cough* sony *cough*. Also I'm pretty sure steam already has support for this stuff too.

 

[Barrel Cannon]

I somehow missed the first bullet point of singular identity. I wish all games had this. I don't even mind having console only matchmaking, I just want to be able to carry over my progress to different consoles for the games I play.

 

[Deleted member 42]

I think I see what their game is now RE: that store

They're gonna try to pop everything on everything, similar to how Microsoft wants their products on every platform, just so long as you pay/use theirs

 

[OMEGALUL]

all platforms, and all stores

Why do I have the feeling this isn't going to be available for steam users....

 

[Synth]

The cross platform stuff is nice and all but doesn't matter much if the consoles won't let it happen *cough* sony *cough*. Also I'm pretty sure steam already has support for this stuff too.

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If by "support for this stuff" you mean leaving it to every small developer to implement from the ground up for themselves... then sure.

And consoles will evidently let quite a bit of the most important functionality described here work... but as Epic states, they've already done it all with Fortnite.

Valve used to do console releases... they didn't do this.

 

[spineduke]

I think I see what their game is now RE: that store

They're gonna try to pop everything on everything, similar to how Microsoft wants their products on every platform, just so long as you pay/use theirs

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the battle to be a cross platform provider is going to lead to some very interesting, fractured times. it helps that Epic already has a healthier relationship with the console makers though, and they have one of the biggest games on the market.

 

[Barrel Cannon]

Oh man, can't wait to see the PS Network engineers who needed 4-5 years to allow nickname changes to work side by side with the guys who are still using friend codes.

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I can sort of give Sony some slack for the name change issue. I'm sure that stems from just bad planning. Even Microsoft had to shutdown their whole original Xbox Live service to make improvements to the current iteration we use today.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

all platforms, and all stores

Why do I have the feeling this isn't going to be available for steam users....

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"These services will be free for all developers, and will be open to all engines, all platforms, and all stores. "

Why would that not include Steam?

 

[bsigg]

all platforms, and all stores

Why do I have the feeling this isn't going to be available for steam users....

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Because Valve won't want to add it to Steam?

 

[Deleted member 42]

the battle to be a cross platform provider is going to lead to some very interesting, fractured times. it helps that Epic already has a healthier relationship with the console makers though, and they have one of the biggest games on the market.

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I bet they can't force the issue for full cross/buy, but progression/DLC and such might swap over if Fortnite is any indicator

That could get Blizzard into the similar game too where your progression saves across, which would be very useful

 

[elzeus]

• Cross-Platform Voice Comms (coming Q3 2019 to all platforms): Epic is building a new in-game voice communications service supporting all platforms, all stores, and all engines, which will be available for free. (For developers needing an immediately-available voice solution, check out Discord, Vivox, TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble.)

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That's huge for crossplaying with Switch. I'm not a fan of everything thing Epic does but they really have been putting other gaming companies, platforms and stores to shame for the last year... Epic is going all in.

 

[spineduke]

I bet they can't force the issue for full cross/buy, but progression/DLC and such might swap over if Fortnite is any indicator

That could get Blizzard into the similar game too where your progression saves across, which would be very useful

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reading all this, the Epic store is really launching in 2019 Q3

you get your cloud saves, achievements etc, and cross platform progression, which is really cool.

i think if they get that, it would be the biggest get- i love the idea of playing an indie game on the switch, and then being able to carry on PC for example.

 

[Parenegade]

I'm sure this thread will pop off just like all of the previous Epic threads.

 

[Deleted member 4044]

Sounds great, excited to check this all out and evaluate it when it launches.

Steam's social features are its biggest weakness, IMO. It's why Discord has been so massively popular/successful.

 

[Synth]

I'm sure this thread will pop off just like all of the previous Epic threads.

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Yup any moment now we should see a ton of familiar faces, all ready to acknowledge a byproduct of competition on the platform.

 

[Lackless]

Good on Epic!

 

[benzopil]

This is huge. Still sad that Monster Hunter World doesn't support crossplay.

But now I'm even more hyped for Monster Hunter World 2!

 

[Deleted member 5764]

Holy hell, this has some serious potential if other devs can take advantage of the tools. If this means next-gen might be a little more open I'm all the hell for it.

 

[Hace]

Does this mean every game on the epic store will have an login option for it's console counterpart?

 

[Tunesmith]

Tencent eyeing all the customer data's.

 

[Derrick01]

If by "support for this stuff" you mean leaving it to every small developer to implement from the ground up for themselves... then sure.

And consoles will evidently let quite a bit of the most important functionality described here work... but as Epic states, they've already done it all with Fortnite.

Valve used to do console releases... they didn't do this.

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Not really sure what the big deal is when during the whole sony won't do crossplay thing earlier this year we kept hearing about how easy it was to implement, they just needed everyone to sign off on it. Again what epic is doing here isn't really new but it comes down to everyone working together. Sony caved on fortnite but pretty much nothing else last I knew.

Tencent eyeing all the customer data's.

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Oh you know they're salivating over it lol. They're probably the driving force behind the whole store concept.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Sounds great, excited to check this all out and evaluate it when it launches.

Steam's social features are its biggest weakness, IMO. It's why Discord has been so massively popular/successful.

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an launcher-agnostic social platform won't be replaced by anything Steam, Epic or anyone else at this point. Discord is too big and too central to the multiplayer PC gaming experience. That's a good thing, IMO.

 

[CountAntonio]

So this is where Dauntless is getting the crossplay and mobile goodness from. If Epic pulls this off and starts an actual trend they will be my heroes.

 

[DontHateTheBacon]

That's a long wait for those features :s

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Hey, we've waited this long with not much of an idea of where the tunnel could possibly end... what's a few more quarters?

 

[Garcia el Gringo]

I use Fortnite cross-progression every damn day between Xbox One X, Switch, PS4, Android and PC. I use Fortnite cross-play multiple times a week to play with friends across all platforms. My expectations have been completely skewed by Epic's cross-play/progression offerings - good, native cross-plat voice chat on Switch alone has been game-changing.

Albeit, from this blog post alone, I can't process the realities of these offerings for other devs as a layman/player. I'll be curious to see how it shakes out for devs and players once the tech is available in the latter half of 2019.

 

[spineduke]

Tencent eyeing all the customer data's.

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haha, yes, it would centralize a lot of data - something i wonder if platform providers would be comfortable with handing over. As cool as all of this sounds, I rather just wait and see how console makers respond.

 

[Novocaine]

"Cross-Platform Parties and Matchmaking "
This is pretty damn fucking massive. Epic doing what Sony/MS/Nintendo aren't capable of doing alone.

m23

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Not to downplay this because it's cool as shit, but doesn't Minecraft do this already?

 

[Deleted member 4044]

an launcher-agnostic social platform won't be replaced by anything Steam, Epic or anyone else at this point. Discord is too big and too central to the multiplayer PC gaming experience. That's a good thing, IMO.

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Didn't say it would. But in the future, if I can play a multiplayer game on my PC with friends on PS4 and Switch and we are all in a party chat without requiring them to run Discord on their phones, that would be pretty great. That's how it works in Fortnite for me now.

 

[Deleted member 268]

Very good, strange this thread hasn't hit traffic already, but I'm optimistic.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

Lots of games that need cross-play are not able to do it financially, so this is very good.

Thought this was the case with the Skullomania fighter.

 

[Deleted member 31817]

Fortnite's implementation of cross-platform progression AND play is the future of gaming. People need to adapt or perish. This is awesome for Epic to do. Hopefully games like Rocket League and Overwatch could make use of this stuff.

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Overwatch isn't going to do it ever for crossplay and thank god for that (pc and console versions are different games). But they're also never going to do it for cross progrrssion bc less lootbox sales.

 

[Synth]

Not really sure what the big deal is when during the whole sony won't do crossplay thing earlier this year we kept hearing about how easy it was to implement, they just needed everyone to sign off on it. Again what epic is doing here isn't really new but it comes down to everyone working together. Sony caved on fortnite but pretty much nothing else last I knew.

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Even *if* Sony decides to continue being non-cooperative, this would still be valuable across all the other platforms. What Epic is proposing IS new, and would make things drastically easier for team like Psyonix who instead have been forced to implement a crossplatform party/voice-chat/matchmaking solution of their own uniquely for their own game. Rather than every individual game studio having to go through that endeavour (which I'm not aware of a single example of Valve assisting with), Epic is offering a generic solution to the problem that considers more than just the PC platform.

If anything, they'd likely be the best shot at putting an end to Sony's crossplay nonsense for good... the momentum behind Fortnite alone made them cave before... imagine what the momentum behind a generic implementation supporting every platform excluding PlayStation may look like.

 

[Deleted member 1476]

"Epic Store - Coming Q3 2019" should be the tagline.

 

[spineduke]

Overwatch isn't going to do it ever for crossplay and thank god for that (pc and console versions are different games). But they're also never going to do it for cross progrrssion bc less lootbox sales.

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i was just discussing that - wouldn't this give more value to your skins and encourage spending for mtx in general? how many ppl invest in more than one platform for their dlc/skins for their double dipped games?