Epic Games has just made a major announcement for all the game developers. The announcement is that Epic Games will let game developers use their cross-platform tools for free. These cross-platform tools include software infrastructure and tools used to run their massively popular Fortnite game.

Now, we all know how good Fortnite is as a game with rich graphics and gameplay. To allow all those platforms which should be proprietary for free is a massive announcement, make no mistake.

We also have specific details about the tools which Epic Games will allow you, if you are a game developer, for free. The tools include the ability to sync a player’s profile and in-game purchases across multiple platforms, to provide cross-platform voice communication, and to allow cross-platform partying and matchmaking. There are more features too which are allowed for free but even these tools are much valued for game developers.

This announcement was made yesterday by Epic themselves. In the announcement, the company said “Throughout 2019, we’ll be launching a large set of cross-platform game services originally built for Fortnite, and battle-tested with 200,000,000 players across seven platforms, These services will be free for all developers, and will be open to all engines, all platforms, and all stores. As a developer, you’re free to choose mix-and-match solutions from Epic and others as you wish.”

Now, this is also believed to be a tactical move from Epic Games. This is to compete with Valve’s Steam platform which offers similar tools to game developers. Now, it might happen that the game developers would prefer to use Epic’s platform to develop games instead of Valve.

One of the reasons for this is that Epic has already announced a massively discounted revenue cut from game developers. Epic Games will give 80% of revenue to game developers and only take 20% out of them which is significantly lower revenue cut than all the other platforms.

Via – Polygon