Epic Games announced in 2019 that two new featureshave been added to its Online Services project : the anti-cheat system Easy Anti-Cheat and the voice chat system Voice.
Epic Online Services, or EOS as it is also known, is a service that opens cross-platform systems developed for Fortnite to all developers and all games. This means that even if the game is available on Steam, developers can use it to communicate between Steam and EGS (and other platforms).
Easy AntiCheat is already used in games including Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Rust, Chivalry 2 and Fortnite. Epic has now made its use free and made it available to everyone.
Voice is also a cross-platform system used in Fortnite. Thus, voice chat is handled via Voice servers, EOS takes over all operations. Normally voice chat and anti-cheat systems are one of the hefty cost items for big games, and in some cases it is even said to be worth up to millions of dollars. Epic Games is giving them up for free because, according to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, “contributing to the creation of metaverses.”
Metaverse refers to Epic’s platform-independent online gaming and entertainment ecosystem. It is aimed not only to play games with the cross-platform, but also to allow players, wallets, game files to move freely between devices. This means that when you run a game from Steam, you can access your friends list in Epic; Epic is also expanding its user base by offering such features for free.
