Epic's free multiplayer tools let developers enable Steam crossplay

In 2019, Epic made the online services developed for Fortnite freely available to any game developer who wanted to use them. The software development kit included systems for friends lists, matchmaking, lobbies, leaderboards, stat-tracking, and cross-platform multiplayer. Recently, it brought crossplay between PC and PlayStation to Fall Guys in all its playlists. And now, Epic Online Services lets developers enable crossplay between Epic and Steam.

A video accompanies the news, showing two friends trying to connect so they can play a fictional game called Neon Party Squad together. Tragically, they're separated because one of them is playing through Epic Games and the other is on "PC Store".

Epic's not so shy about naming its competitor in the accompanying blog post. "Epic Online Services crossplay now works seamlessly on Steam and Epic Games Store," it says, "enabling Steam players to search from over half a billion friends, connect and play. 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."

Developers who use the Epic Online Services toolset can choose which features they want to add to their game, including crossplay. Games that use it will have an overlay merging friends lists from across storefronts, through which players can search for friends and join games. "With just a few clicks," Epic says, "Steam players can jump into a game while an Epic Games account is created under the hood for their Steam account."

Epic has been bullish on the value of supporting crossplay for a while now, with Tim Sweeney saying "I think it's in everyone's interest to support interoperability," back in 2018. It certainly worked out for Fortnite, and when Rocket League came to the Epic Games Store it had not only crossplay, but cross-platform progression as well, letting players access their items no matter which version they launched.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.