Epic Games will let developers use its voice and anti-cheat service for free

Epic Games has expanded its online service products to allow developers Have access to free voice communication and anti-cheat software. The company initially built the Epic online service for Fortnite and then released it as a toolset, allowing other developers to use their creations for free on any engine or platform.

This rollout adds Easy Anti-Cheat to the list of tools developers will be able to access as part of the Epic Online Services SDK. Epic purchased the Helsinki-based company that developed the software back in 2018 and uses the anti-cheating solution on Fortnite. There are hundreds of other games that also use the software to keep cheaters out, including Mediatonic's Fall Guys, which suffered from a huge cheating problem.

Developers will be able to control and enforce anti-cheating measures for their game with the software's help. And since Epic plans to provide Easy Anti-Cheat with continuous updates, game-makers will have the ability to keep dishonest players out even as cheats evolve to evade detection. That said, the software isn't perfect and a number of online games that use it still struggle with cheaters. According to data coll

ected by Surfshark VPN just a couple of months ago, for instance, Fortnite had three-times as many cheating-related YouTube views — 26,822,000 hits to be exact — as second-placed Overwatch. While not everyone who viewed those YouTube videos cheated, it goes to show how much interest there is in trying to find a way around the game's anti-cheat measures. Epic Games has expanded its online service offerings to give developers access to free voice communications and anti-cheat software. The company initially built the Epic online service for Fortnite, and then released it as a toolset, and other developers can use their creations for free on any engine or platform.

Like the other services included in the EOS SDK, the new voice communications feature was also originally used in Epic's famous battle royale game. It enables built-in one-on-one conversations and group chats for authenticated users across platforms during matches and in lobbies. Connections between users are relayed through servers owned by Epic Online Services, which will also handle and operate a game's voice feature — something that could cost developers millions of dollars — for free.