Epic have made Easy Anti-Cheat and cross platform voice comms free for game devs

Epic Games' platform war with Valve is being fought on many fronts, not just via the Epic Games Store. The less noticed part of the fight is Epic Online Services, which provides backend tools for game developers similar to those Valve offer via Steamworks. Epic have now added two new parts to that service, making Easy Anti-Cheat and cross-platform voice comms tech free for all developers to use.

Here's a trailer that Epic made for the Easy Anti-Cheat launch:

Easy Anti-Cheat has been around for nearly ten years, and its creators were acquired by Epic back in 2018. It's already a tool used by major online games, including Apex Legends, For Honor, Dead By Daylight, Rust, and Epic's own Fortnite. It's not locked down to any particular store or platform, either, and neither is the voice comms tech that's now free to use.

Epic obviously already provide a lot of middleware to game developers, including the Unreal Engine, but tools like the above - which can be integrated into any engine - further embed Epic's work through the videogame ecosystem. Their own FAQ says that they offer Epic Online Services for free with the "goal of encouraging wider adoption of all of Epic’s offerings".

EAC is a kernel-level anti-cheat software, which some people are always wary of, but as far as I know it normally only launches when you boot a game - unlike Valorant's original anti-cheat methods that concerned players last year. It's very likely you've already played multiple games which used EAC without even realising it.