Epic Online Services expands free crossplay overlay from PC to consoles
Rajen Kishna |
August 16, 2023Connect players across platforms and storefronts
In June 2022, Epic Online Services introduced a free PC crossplay overlay to empower developers to connect their games and communities across multiple PC stores.Today, we are expanding this crossplay overlay with initial support for games on Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Sony PlayStation while enhancing its capabilities across all supported platforms.
The crossplay overlay offers a ubiquitous way to authenticate players, streamline friend management, and provide game invite and joinability functionality that’s designed to be compliant with native platform requirements.
Crossplay enables bigger games, bigger audiences, and growth for the global games industry. With the added support for the major console platforms, Epic Online Services now enables you to connect more players with a single overlay.
Tap into an ecosystem of 750+ million players
The Epic Online Services crossplay overlay now works seamlessly on Steam, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation, and Epic Games Store, enabling players to find their friends across the over 750 million Epic Games accounts, connect, and play.Anyone that’s ever developed a crossplay game knows that there are a lot of elements that go into making it feel seamless. With the crossplay overlay, any game can enable players to sign in to their Epic Games account on all platforms and easily interact with their friends. Here’s a breakdown of what’s included.
- Consistent overlay UX. An out-of-the-box overlay that provides a familiar player experience on PC and console platforms.
- One combined friends list. Friend lists across platforms merge into one overlay, enabling players to see and invite their friends in one place.
- Frictionless cross-platform account creation. Players can start playing quickly using their existing Epic Games account or a new one that’s created for them, linked to their active native platform account.
- Integrated game invites. In-game, players can search and send game invites to friends across platforms, making connecting and playing together easy.
- Secure social experience on any platform. Implements the native platforms' trust, safety, and privacy guidelines, in addition to Epic's own trust and safety controls.
- 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 what they want, and leave the rest. Crossplay tools are no different.
Free multiplayer services to help you focus
Crossplay is one of the many services included with Epic Online Services at no cost to you. It enables you to use a single back-end service provider for authentication, social, and game functionality, leaving more time to focus on building what makes your game unique.Epic Online Services are battle-tested and used by hundreds of games at scale today. It supports game development using any engine, can be deployed on any store and platform, and we are committed to earning and keeping the trust of anyone who uses it.
Get started today
Get started with three simple steps at dev.epicgames.com/sdk:- Download Epic Online Services SDK 1.16
- Log in and configure it in the developer portal at dev.epicgames.com/portal
- Check out the documentation at dev.epicgames.com/docs
Ready to get started?
Epic Online Services exist to help developers scale their games across platforms and stores with a universal set of services that keep all friends connected.
Learn more about Epic Online Services crossplay tools, and download the SDK.
Learn more about Epic Online Services crossplay tools, and download the SDK.