Epic Games is bringing its crossplay tools for developers to consoles
By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
Epic Games is expanding its crossplay tools available as part of Epic Online Services from PC to PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, the company announced on Wednesday. The change could mean that developers will be able to more easily bring crossplay multiplayer to their games.
The company first introduced the crossplay tools in June 2022, but at the time, they only worked to let games support crossplay across the Epic Games Store and Valve’s Steam. The tools offer a special overlay that “offers a ubiquitous way to authenticate players, streamline friend management, and provide game invite and joinability functionality that’s designed to be compliant with native platform requirements,” Epic wrote in its Wednesday blog post.
Epic has long been a vocal proponent of crossplay, especially after the huge cross-platform success of Fortnite. The company says it now has more than 750 million Epic Games accounts, which could mean a potentially very large number of people will be able to easily play crossplay in a game that uses Epic Online Services.
But Epic also benefits from developers using its crossplay tools: developers happy with Epic Online Services might also use Epic’s popular Unreal Engine, while players who sign up for Epic Games accounts might use them to buy games on the company’s PC store.
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