Epic Games learned a lot about creating online services with the launch of Fortnite, the enormously successful battle royale game with 250 million users. Now, it is giving away those online services to game developers for free to operate and scale games across any engine, store, and platform using a single Epic Online Services software development kit (SDK).
Originally built for Fortnite, Epic Online Services have been battle-tested by nearly 250 million players and are a suite of robust solutions for developers to provide players with a unified social experience across platforms. Although announced in December, today marks the first availability of services for developers. Through a single SDK and a developer portal, developers can access services, including game analytics, to understand and boost player retention and engagement and a ticketing system to connect directly with players through integrated customer support tools that tie tickets to a player’s profile.
“You can use our Epic Online Services on any platform across any store for free, including competing stores,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, in an interview with GamesBeat. “You have no obligation to ship on our store. Everything works. You can put games from any engine on our store and use any services you like. Developers are free to mix and match and choose.”
He added, “That’s the principle our developers rely on to make sense of their world. Can you imagine how dysfunctional it would be if you could only use one physics system on one console and another on another? Now you have to build physics twice? That doesn’t work. But that situation slowly arose with friends and matchmaking. It’s great that it’s all being sorted out.”
By leveraging these free tools, developers can better understand how and where their games are gaining traction with players, connect directly with players for customer support, and access a unified portal to manage all services without needing to build an internal infrastructure. Additional features and tools will continue to become available throughout 2019. Epic Games said that its Epic Games Store has gotten off to a good start as the company tries to provide an alternative store for PC games to Valve’s Steam store.
Epic has more than 85 million players in its PC ecosystem, said Steve Allison, head of the Epic Games Store, in Epic’s session at the Game Developers Conference. Subnautica was downloaded 4.5 million times in two weeks as a free title in the store. Slime Rancher was also released for free, and downloaded 4.5 million times. The Metro Exodus exclusive on the Epic Games Store did 2.5 times more sales than the previous game, Metro: Last Light, on the rival Steam store. Allison said developers would make hundreds of millions on the Epic Games Store.
Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 debuted on Uplay and the Epic Games Store. New titles include Dauntless, Spell Rage, and The Cycle (by Yager). Take-Two will also take Obsidian’s sci-fi title, The Outer Lands and Ancestors, to the Epic Games Store. The Humble Bundle has raised $145 million for charity, and the Humble Store will also host several of the same titles. Allison said Epic doesn’t want to create just another “walled garden.”
