Announced back at GDC 2019, after a brief delay Epic Games Online Services are finally here. EOS provide all of the commonly needed networking components for game development, completely free. This includes tasks such as leaderboards, lobbies, matchmaking, storage, P2P and more. EOS provides the following services:
- Game Services deliver lobbies, matchmaking, peer-to-peer connectivity, player data storage, achievements and stats, leaderboards, game analytics, and player ticketing. More features are coming later, including voice chat. You can use these services together with your own account system, with platform account systems, or choose to use Epic Games accounts.
- Epic Account Services support cross-platform accounts, login, friends, and presence, and are interoperable with console account systems. Reach an audience of over 350 million players with 2.2 billion friend connections on over half a billion devices across seven platforms.
You can learn more here and here. Log in to the developer portal to download the SDKs, with both C++ and C# SDKs available. EOS services are game engine agnostic and can be run in Unreal Engine, Godot, Unity, CryEngine and more.
It is hard to understand why Epic Games are making their networking solutions available free, so I reached out to Tim Sweeney for comment:
You can learn more about Epic Games Online Services in the video below.
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https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2020/05/...-services/