Epic Games announced on Tuesday that it would be providing developers with free anti-cheat and voice chat services for implementation in games. The services will be part of the studio’s Epic Online Suite, which was first announced in 2019 and is available for any game engine.
Additionally, the suite supports Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.
The voice chat service, aptly titled “Voice,” is a cross-platform voice communication service that helps developers incorporate voice chat functionality in games based on any major engine.
The service relays voice data through Epic’s back-end servers, and the technology handles all the scaling and quality of service features.
As per Epic’s blog post, the service has already been integrated and “battle-tested” in Fortnite and “has proven to provide high-quality, stable, fast, and efficient voice functionality at a massive scale.”
The anti-cheat system comes courtesy of Easy Anti-Cheat, which was acquired by Epic Games back in 2018. The service has been around for nearly a decade and was initially available for third-party developers to license for their games, but now comes free as a part of Epic Online Services.
This should encourage many more developers to implement the system in their games. What’s more, the service has a pretty great roster of games under its belt which includes Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and, of course, Fortnite.
Epic Games feels that an anti-cheat system should be an essential prerequisite for developers.
It gives them direct control of anti-cheat enforcement in their game and maintains a fair playing field between PC and other platforms. And since most cheating software is more readily available on PC, the presence of some sort of defense is critical.
However, like other anti-cheat software, Easy Anti-Cheat can occasionally cause issues for non-cheaters and label innocent software as malicious, so it’s not the most ideal solution. But considering that cheating is still a significant issue in many of the world’s biggest titles, the pros outweigh the cons.
As stated earlier, Voice and Anti-Cheat will be available free of cost as a part of Epic Online Suite, and if you’re wondering what the catch is, there is none. Or at least there isn’t one, according to Epic Games.
In the FAQ section on its website, the company says it offers the services for free
“with the goal of encouraging wider adoption of all of Epic’s offerings, and of making cross-play, cross-progression, and other open and interconnected, online features more accessible to everyone.”
Epic Games
About Epic Games
Established in 1991, Epic Games is an American video game and software developer founded by CEO Tim Sweeney and is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. The company developed the Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine that also powers their internally developed video games, such as the Unreal, Gears of War, and Infinity Blade series. Fortnite, one of the world’s biggest games with over 350 million accounts and 2.5 billion friend connections, is run by Epic.
Epic offers an end-to-end digital platform for developers and creators to create, distribute, and operate games and other content through Unreal Engine, Epic Games Store, and Epic Online Services.
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