[From the industry] Epic Online Services releases free PC crossplay tools for all developers

This is a press release posted in addition to our usual editorial content.

Today Epic Games released Epic Online Services SDK 1.15 for developers, introducing new crossplay features for PC. Battle-tested at scale across Fortnite, Rocket League, and Fall Guys, Crossplay for PC is the first in a series of plug-and-play services that give developers everything they need to connect their game and community across platforms and stores.

With the arrival of SDK 1.15, Epic Online Services supports crossplay between Steam and Epic Games Store, enabling Steam players to search from over half a billion friends, connect and play. To make it easy for players to connect with friends across PC stores, Epic Online Services includes an overlay that merges Steam and Epic Games friends into a single list, as well as an interface to search for friends, send and receive friend requests, and join multiplayer game sessions across stores. Development to natively support more PC stores is underway, as well as macOS and Linux support for desktop, with support for crossplay on console and mobile platforms coming later.

Crossplay enables bigger games, bigger audiences, and growth for the global gaming industry. Epic Online Services delivers a single set of services for game development on any engine, any store and any platform and are proven to scale in some of the largest games.

“Crossplay gives all friends the opportunity to come together and create fond memories across interactive experiences. We are in the fortunate position to drive change in the industry with crossplay tools for all developers and we believe that connecting friends and communities will take the gaming industry to its next major growth spurt and its next billion players,” said Simon Allaeys, Senior Director of Online Services at Epic Games.

Crossplay for PC includes the following features:

• All friends, one place. Steam and Epic Games Store friends merge into one overlay allowing players to see all friends in a single list.
• Integrated game invites. In-game, players can search and send invites to friends across Steam and the Epic Games Store, making connecting and playing together easy.
• Account linking. Onboarding without emails or password prompts. With just a few clicks, Steam players can jump into a game while an Epic Games account is created under the hood for their Steam account.
• Update-free improvements. When games are installed, the crossplay features are distributed via a self-updating in-game overlay. Players can enjoy new features and improvements without needing to update anything themselves.
• Plug-and-play SDK. Each Epic Online Services toolset is self-contained, so developers can mix and match the services they want to implement, incorporate the things they want, and leave the rest. Crossplay tools are no different.

Get started with Crossplay for PC by downloading the Epic Online Services SDK 1.15 and configuring it in the developer portal at dev.epicgames.com.