Epic is making Fortnite's matchmaking and account services available to Unreal Engine devs for free
Epic is opening up its Online Services package to game developers.
The Epic Online Services, a suite of tools Epic Games developed for Fortnite, are being made available to all developers individually or as a whole.
Epic Online Services include friends list, matchmaking, lobbies, leaderboards and system-agnostic accounts. Epic has been using them with Fortnite across all platforms, so they're very proven.
The services will be made available in a multiplatform SDK, free to Unreal Engine developers. Epic says because you can pick and choose, you'll be able to use what you pick alongside your existing, in-house services.
This is only one of several Epic announcements made today. The publisher's big news is the reveal of Unreal Engine 5, and a full demo running on PS5. The engine will be available in preview early next year for developers.