To understand precisely what Epic Online Services will provide, it’s best to consider the strength of Fortnite’s current online services. Fortnite is supported across seven game platforms, including PC, consoles, and mobile devices. It’s able to offer cross-play and matchmaking between these devices. It’s able to issue major patches across all of these devices. And it does so fast, often, and with little to no downtime. Fortnite’s online services are incredibly impressive, and they’re now available to everyone.
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“Through Epic Online Services, we strive to help build a user-friendly ecosystem for both developers and players, where creators can benefit regardless of how they choose to build and publish their games, and where players can play games with their friends and enjoy the same quality experience regardless of the hardware they own,” is the prepared statement from Epic Games’ GM of online services, Chris Dyl. Dyl believes that “open, integrated” platforms are key to the future of gaming.
Epic Online Servies will launch via two suites of services. Epic Account Services allows game developers to use Epic’s account system, which epic describes as featuring over 350 million players with 2.2 billion friend connections between them. This suite includes player login and access to friends.
The second suite is the larger and has the most potential to really expand the potential of some games. Game Services include access to Epic’s matchmaking, achievements, leaderboards, game analytics, and several other features. These features can be built around and shared across multiple different platforms, including integration with Apple, Discord, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and Epic Games.
Developers can visit Epic’s official development portal right now and download the Epic Online Services SDK. At that point, developers are able to use all of the services provided through Epic Online Services as they see fit.
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