It’s always been a frustrating feature of online gaming platforms that you often can’t crossplay with friends. Here’s the scenario. You’ve both bought the same game, but your friend purchased it on the Epic Games Store while you have it on Steam. The game developers don’t have an online friend system, so you’re basically out of luck. You can’t play together. Epic seems to have a solution to your Epic and Steam crossplay woes.
According to a June 16 blog post on their website, the company now offers greater crossplay support tools for game developers. What does this mean for gamers? Well, a lot–actually. According to Epic, you will soon be able to link your Steam account with your Epic account.
What Do the New Epic and Steam Crossplay Upgrades Mean?
This greater flexibility means that friends on Steam are ported over to games you play on your Epic account. As someone with hundreds of friends on Steam but only a handful on Epic Game Store–this is an obvious plus.
You can invite any of your existing friends into your games on Epic. Imagine the possibilities. Reconnecting with old Counter-Strike friends in Valorant, or just playing a quick round with an old buddy in the newest Epic Free Game of the week.
See below for the full list of Steam x Epic enhancements below:
- All friends, one place. Steam and Epic Games Store friends merge into one overlay allowing players to see all friends in a single list.
- Integrated game invites. In-game, players can search and send invites to friends across Steam and the Epic Games Store, making connecting and playing together easy.
- Account linking. Onboarding without emails or password prompts. With just a few clicks, Steam players can jump into a game while an Epic Games account is created under the hood for their Steam account.
- Update-free improvements. When games are installed, the crossplay features are distributed via a self-updating in-game overlay. Players can enjoy new features and improvements without needing to update anything themselves.
- Plug-and-play SDK. Each Epic Online Services toolset is self-contained, so developers can mix and match the services they want to implement, incorporate the things they want, and leave the rest. Crossplay tools are no different.
See the full developer update video below:
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