Epic has announced that it will be opening up a large set of cross-platform game services to all developers. These services were initially built for Fortnite and will be available for free to developers to adopt into their own games.
To start with, Epic will first roll out services related to cross-platform login, profiles, friends, voice chat, parties, matchmaking, cloud saves and achievements. All of these will be opened up to developers starting Q2 of 2019, with more features to be announced at a later date.
If these implementations end up being widely used, it will be another set of Epic tools that other game developers would rely on, in addition to the Unreal Engine. That is not necessarily a bad thing, considering the success of Fortnite as a cross-platform title and could make things easier for developers that are already utilizing Unreal Engine as well as Unity for their creations.
With this move by Epic, we hope that it would allow more games to include cross-platform features. That way, users will no longer need to worry much about the platform of their choice since everyone can play together.
(Source: Epic Games)
