Epic Games Is Making Fortnite's Party Chat And Anti-Cheat Tools Free For Everyone

Epic Games has pioneered numerous tools for online gaming, two of which it is now going to start distributing for free for any studios to utilize. The company's anti-cheat software and cross-platform compatible chat solution is being added to the Epic Online Services suite, providing quick and easy access to any engine that is used for games across PC and consoles.

Epic's Easy Anti-Cheat isn't a new tool, but it has previously only been licensed out by Epic to studios willing to pay. As the prevalence of cross-platform play has grown, Epic has seen the need to provide the software for free given how more and more games are letting players interact with PC--a platform where most cheating software is available.

This is the same anti-cheat software used in massive online games like Fortnite, which is a good example of how effective it can be. It isn't perfect--cheaters still make it through while some players can be falsely flagged--but it's likely one of the best solutions for studios that can't pioneer their own.

This also applies to Epic's cross-platform voice chat solution, which is also going to be added to the same free suite of tool. This tool allows for both one-to-one and larger party chat and comes with support for chat, agnostic of the platform your game is on. This is also the same solution used for Fortnite, so at least there's proof of it scaling well with a massive player base.

The Epic Online Services suite isn't exclusive to the company's Unreal Engine, making it easy to integrate into other popular and easy to access engines, such as Unity. Epic hopes this will encourage more cross-platform integration for more games, but also a bigger account base as it continues to scale in every direction possible.