https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-2019-cross-platform-online-services-roadmap

This is potentially really good, because it means GOG no longer has to play catch-up with Steam, but can instead outsource these hard infrastructure tasks.

Who knew eh? Oh the half a dozen recent threads about this?

Did you read the post? This isn't about their new store. They're going to provide cross-platform chat, voice chat, achievement, cloud saves, leaderboards, and matchmaking for free no matter what platform or store you use.

Not one mention of Linux. Yep, pretty much feature parity with gog.

That article isn't specific enough. "PC" is too broad of a term to be considered a platform, since PC features many different platforms.

This could potentially be amazingly great news for GOG if Epic is going to solve GOG's tremendous Crossplay problem, by letting GOG games that are routed through Epic have Crossplay with Steam games.

But the article doesn't make clear whether or not they are going to do that.

And the article also isn't clear about how they are going to offer Cross-platform Achievements. Wouldn't that require the consent of the companies who offer the original Achievements? I.e. GOG would have to agree to let GOG customers integrate their GOG accounts with their Epic accounts before Epic would be allowed to integrate them, right? If so, whose to say that Epic will be able to achieve such an agreement?

Someone needs to put a lot more questions to Epic about these issues and get them to be way more specific about what they are & aren't offering.

Agreed. This is nothing but a whole lot of promises right now, but it's a potentially positive development if they actually execute.

Pretty sure by "PC" they mean "The Epic Games Store purchased games" And that this isn't some mega infrastructure for all games on all stores.

This is no doubt going to be the Epic store, I don't see how anyone can doubt that. Sure, the service may be free, but it's no doubt going to be tied to that store. Stuff like chat etc is going to require a client. Achievements would need a callback to the store so an integrated framework to some extent in the game.

Well... They specifically mention "all stores" and "all platforms" (and the rest of the article makes it clear platforms refers to PC and the various consoles and mobile OSes).

They also go on to say Which suggests they will be looking at connecting you through your GOG or Steam account rather than requiring an Epic account or similar to access these services.


I think that sounds pretty positive to me, and not just for PC gaming either.

So basically if there is a game on the Epic store, Epic will attempt to facilitate multiplayer with the same game on other platforms. That's good and fine and I'm sure it's some nice PR, but I can't help but think of Xbox and their willingness to do cross-play with Sony. Obviously if you have the smaller install base, you want cross-play, because if significantly increases who your customer base has to play with. What does Steam get out of it though? They have something in the range of 100+ million players, they don't need Epic's users to keep multiplayer active.

It makes Epic look good to offer, and makes the other companies look bad if they refuse, but will this really amount to anything tangible for the end user? I can't see any large sized company caring about cross-play with Epic users.

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A further read suggests it's actually games running on Epic's engine, not necessarily games sold on their store. I suppose that's better, since it means games not sold on the Epic storefront but using Unreal can still have cross-play.

If it's open source and any good, it might have a chance. If it's an Epic proprietary product, no competitor will use it, because the dependence would be too strong. If it's no good it would be just another one of these half-baked tries at getting some gaming infrastructure in place. They are not the first one and not the last one. It's basically the same as Galaxy.

In the worst case this is just another fragmentation of the market, in the best case this is strong competition and alternative to Galaxy or Steam API.

My idea: What the world needs now is a cross-"cross-platform services" interface. A software layer that abstracts all the possible cross-platform services from Steam, GoG, Epic, ... so that they all can easily be plugged in and out at will. That would definitely make game software development much easier.

I think your missing the point. It's not down to Steam, or GOG, it will be down to the developers.
If this works and is as all encompassing as Epic claims then you don't have to maintain a GOG Galaxy build and a Steam build and an Epic build, you just have one game with multiplayer, achievements and everything else that works with all of them.

And when you look at it like that then it is very valuable to developers, more people playing together on different platforms means multiplayer is more active for longer (and presumably whatever income you make from that lasts longer too, or the positive buzz around your game lasts longer and long tail sales increase)

Also they specifically state it's not tied to any store or engine, so anyone could use it. Not just Epic store games or Unreal engine games.

According to the blurb the ongoing costs are quite small and it's only setting it up that is expensive, so I imagine Fortnite money (considering it is based on Fortnite stuff anyway) and income from the new store will fund it.

>> According to the blurb the ongoing costs are quite small and it's only setting it up that is expensive, so I imagine Fortnite money (considering it is based on Fortnite stuff anyway) and income from the new store will fund it.

And that's where the assumptions are. Things will be peachy IF Fortnite remains a success and IF the Epic store takes off. But what if they don't? That may seem crazy right now (particularly regarding Fortnite), but several years down the line, who knows? Indie devs certainly aren't going to pay a per-game fee for maintaining server infrastructure. That's why I'd rather see the stores pay for it and cover the costs -- it's worth it for GOG, Uplay and EA to pay Epic for using their services rather than trying to develop their own, and once these services are standardized, it'll be worth it for Steam to drop their proprietary services and use Epic's as well.

Actually Steam has a big decision to make now. They can watch as the rest of the world uses Epic's APIs, making developers have to specialize for Steam and possibly making their tech obsolete, or they can open up their own APIs for anyone to use. It's kinda like 3DFX when DirectX and OpenGL caught up.

It'll *be* an Epic build