Something to look ahead to: One concern some gamers could have over the rise of Epic Games’ retailer is the fragmentation of multiplayer communities. If somebody receives a sport without cost on Epic, they might ask whether or not they can play it with mates who purchased it on Steam. Epic’s new improvement instruments purpose to deal with this challenge.
Epic Online Services crossplay was launched to builders final week to assist them maintain Steam and Epic avid gamers collectively. The toolset is not a part of Epic’s Unreal Engine, so any sport operating on any engine can use it.
The crossplay system can hyperlink customers’ Steam and Epic accounts, combining good friend lists and sport invitations. It can even replace with out requiring gamers to patch the underlying sport. Developers can select which crossplay options they need to embody or miss.
Epic’s crossplay instruments at present solely work throughout their consumer and Steam, however they plan to assist different platforms ultimately. That will embody different PC sport shops first together with macOS and Linux. Later, Epic’s crossplay may come to console and cell. Many video games already implement crossplay between all these platforms, however this new effort may make the function much more widespread. Crossplay is obtainable in Epic Online Services SDK 1.15.
Additionally, Epic has added sport scores and polls to its PC sport consumer. Like purchasing carts, that is one vital function that the corporate was surprisingly gradual to implement. After two hours of play, customers can fee a sport on a 5-point scale. Epic may also begin presenting random gamers with polls containing questions on a sport’s varied qualities like graphics or issue.
This added performance reveals that whereas Epic’s retailer remains to be catching up with Steam in some areas, it is making an attempt to distinguish itself in others.
