Courtesy of RetroPixel Digital
News
December 18, 2025
RetroPixel Digital brings crossplay to Green Hawk Platoon with Epic Online Services
Like the living room battles of little green soldiers that inspired it, action-packed first- and third-person shooter Green Hawk Platoon is even more enjoyable when played with friends.
Vancouver-based studio RetroPixel Digital knew that to unite buddies for large-scale multiplayer battles, they needed seamless crossplay. That’s where Epic Online Services came in.
“Epic Online Services made it easy for us to achieve our vision for large-scale, cross-platform multiplayer battles,” says Nic Seymour, Technical Designer at RetroPixel Digital. “Epic Online Services has a lot of initiatives and support that’s aimed at smaller indie game developers that give us resources to pull this vision off.”
Vancouver-based studio RetroPixel Digital knew that to unite buddies for large-scale multiplayer battles, they needed seamless crossplay. That’s where Epic Online Services came in.
“Epic Online Services made it easy for us to achieve our vision for large-scale, cross-platform multiplayer battles,” says Nic Seymour, Technical Designer at RetroPixel Digital. “Epic Online Services has a lot of initiatives and support that’s aimed at smaller indie game developers that give us resources to pull this vision off.”
Courtesy of RetroPixel Digital
Pierre Alexander, CEO and Executive Producer at RetroPixel Digital says that choosing Epic Online Services was the smartest option when it came to budgeting, time, and scope. “The more time developers can save [in terms of] learning new things and debugging issues, the more time we can put into developing cool interactions and experiences that players want to see,” he explains.
“The way the Epic community serves to provide a better experience for all developers is an absolute dream, and we hope that never changes,” says Nick Romick, President and Creative Director at RetroPixel Digital.
Using these resources, RetroPixel Digital found ways to easily integrate other systems into EOS—such as AWS matchmaking for EOS lobbies and sessions—and enable identity providers for users to sign in using their linked Steam, Xbox, or PSN accounts.
Overcoming challenges with the help of the Epic Developer Community and EOS Core
Turning to the Epic Developer Community, RetroPixel Digital found help from other developers on the implementation of some Epic Online Services features.“The way the Epic community serves to provide a better experience for all developers is an absolute dream, and we hope that never changes,” says Nick Romick, President and Creative Director at RetroPixel Digital.
Using these resources, RetroPixel Digital found ways to easily integrate other systems into EOS—such as AWS matchmaking for EOS lobbies and sessions—and enable identity providers for users to sign in using their linked Steam, Xbox, or PSN accounts.
Courtesy of RetroPixel Digital
When it came to integrating Epic Online Services with their Unreal Engine workflow, the team looked to implement services through Blueprint visual scripting, which was greatly aided by a third-party plugin called EOSCore.
EOS Core provides an additional abstraction layer to streamline commands/calls within Blueprints, which sped up development time significantly by enabling the team to avoid manually building every call.
The team also dove into the deeper levels of the plugin to create their own implementation that would spawn Blueprints at runtime depending on which platform the game was running on.
“Once we understood the structure and callback system, EOSCore let us build a fully functional online system without touching C++. It enabled us to work in a structure we're comfortable with, and provides us the ability to track things more easily,” says Navpreet Singh, Gameplay Programmer.
If the studio had to create their own systems for handling their networking services, creating those ‘cherry-on-the-top’ features that wow players would take much longer to develop, test, and polish. This could drastically extend their development cycle by months or even years—or make it necessary to entirely drop some of the features they really wanted to include in the game.
The team also dove into the deeper levels of the plugin to create their own implementation that would spawn Blueprints at runtime depending on which platform the game was running on.
“Once we understood the structure and callback system, EOSCore let us build a fully functional online system without touching C++. It enabled us to work in a structure we're comfortable with, and provides us the ability to track things more easily,” says Navpreet Singh, Gameplay Programmer.
Handling the backend so you can focus on the fun
The team at RetroPixel is relatively small—less than a dozen people—and it was clear from the beginning that it wasn’t feasible for them to create the backend from scratch.If the studio had to create their own systems for handling their networking services, creating those ‘cherry-on-the-top’ features that wow players would take much longer to develop, test, and polish. This could drastically extend their development cycle by months or even years—or make it necessary to entirely drop some of the features they really wanted to include in the game.
Courtesy of RetroPixel Digital
Leveraging Epic Online Services effectively enabled them to outsource the networking infrastructure required to operate and manage Green Hawk Platoon. Freed up from having to worry too much about the backend infrastructure, the team was able to turn their attention to other aspects of development, which was particularly important in crossplay.
“Other services offer great solutions for the PC market, but don’t tap into anything cross-platform,” says Seymour. “Others may offer some sort of cross-platform service but typically require major modifications in order to work with modern games. With the size of our team and the scope of our game, Epic Online Services was clearly the best option. Any other service would have made this core feature non-achievable.”
Looking back on the project, Seymour has some sage advice to offer teams following in RetroPixel Digital’s footsteps in implementing Epic Online Services. “We recommend teams start simple and work through the EOS documentation methodically,” he says. “Taking it step-by-step prevents unnecessary rework, and overall makes troubleshooting much easier.”
In the future, RetroPixel Digital plans to integrate a number of additional EOS-powered features.
These include a wider range of stats for Achievements, metrics to get greater insight into player behavior so they can balance and enhance the overall player experience, Easy Anti-Cheat, because Green Hawk Platoon will also feature a multiplayer mode, and Cloud Save to enable a seamless experience when switching between platforms or reinstalling the game.
For RetroPixel Digital, leveraging EOS enabled Green Hawk Platoon to gain far wider exposure than would have otherwise been possible.
“Without Epic Online Services, smaller studios like us would have a much tougher time getting the opportunity to reach a larger audience on multiple platforms with seamless integration,” concludes Alexander.
For more information on Green Hawk Platoon, check out their page on the Epic Games Store.
“Other services offer great solutions for the PC market, but don’t tap into anything cross-platform,” says Seymour. “Others may offer some sort of cross-platform service but typically require major modifications in order to work with modern games. With the size of our team and the scope of our game, Epic Online Services was clearly the best option. Any other service would have made this core feature non-achievable.”
Looking back on the project, Seymour has some sage advice to offer teams following in RetroPixel Digital’s footsteps in implementing Epic Online Services. “We recommend teams start simple and work through the EOS documentation methodically,” he says. “Taking it step-by-step prevents unnecessary rework, and overall makes troubleshooting much easier.”
In the future, RetroPixel Digital plans to integrate a number of additional EOS-powered features.
These include a wider range of stats for Achievements, metrics to get greater insight into player behavior so they can balance and enhance the overall player experience, Easy Anti-Cheat, because Green Hawk Platoon will also feature a multiplayer mode, and Cloud Save to enable a seamless experience when switching between platforms or reinstalling the game.
For RetroPixel Digital, leveraging EOS enabled Green Hawk Platoon to gain far wider exposure than would have otherwise been possible.
“Without Epic Online Services, smaller studios like us would have a much tougher time getting the opportunity to reach a larger audience on multiple platforms with seamless integration,” concludes Alexander.
For more information on Green Hawk Platoon, check out their page on the Epic Games Store.
We succeed when you succeed
Epic believes in an open, integrated games community. By offering our online services to everyone for free, we aim to empower more developers to serve their own player communities.