Epic Gives Away Online Services Behind ‘Fortnite’
By Brian Crecente
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Epic Games Wednesday officially launched Epic Online Services, a free suite of tools that can be used to launch, operate, and scale online games. And the services don’t just work with Unreal Engine 4, but can be integrated with any engine, platform, or store.
The tools were originally built for “,” so they’ve been tested by nearly 250 million players.
Epic Online Services include the following:
— Game analytics (available now): Store telemetry about your players and their gameplay to understand and boost retention and engagement. Epics dashboards help you make data-driven decisions in real time.
— Ticketing system (available now): Connect directly with players through integrated customer support tools that tie tickets to a players profile. Provide high-quality, personalized support by accessing player data from a single dashboard.
— Player data storage (targeting May 2019): Store and enumerate arbitrary game data on behalf of authorized players.
— Player reports (targeting May 2019): Allow players to report others for positive or negative in-game behavior. Gain valuable feedback directly from the community.
— Achievements, leaderboards & stats (targeting September 2019): Keep track of individual and global player statistics, award in-game achievements, and rank players on leaderboards.
— Communications (targeting October 2019): Enable in-game communication between players across any platform.
— Overlay (targeting October 2019): Provide a unified overlay for friends and other online services that are available to players across different games and engines.
— Parties (targeting October 2019): Enable players to form groups and play together.
— Matchmaking (targeting November 2019): Set up game matches for individual players or predetermined groups.
— Player identity (targeting December 2019): Enable players to log in and connect with others across different platforms.
— Player inventory (targeting December 2019): Manage player inventories, including purchases across different game stores.
“We believe in the power of social gameplay,” said Chris Dyl, director of platforms for .
