EDF 6 on steam under fire on for epic games account requirement
(store.steampowered.com)
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I don't really blame them for using Epic Online Services. If it's something you didn't know about, Epic essentially offers a ton of free multiplayer services to game developers--matchmaking, etc. I'd say for a smaller game it's probably better to use than some sort of independent server, because it may be a lot more resilient to being shut down in a year. All of it is totally cross platform, cross-engine and can be authenticated without an Epic account. I've played around with it a bit, but the miserable little game I'm working on isn't ready for a multiplayer implementation quite yet.
I know because I'm typing words on the internet I'm supposed to have a seething fire of hate for Epic because the Steam community told me to, but they actually offer a lot of really good stuff to small game devs for nothing.
The fact that an account is required is the devs fault. They should use the Connect Interface (which lets users ID by all sorts of platform tokens) versus the Auth Interface (requires Epic account). There's tech stuff about it here https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/game-services/eos-connect-interface#differences-between-auth-interface-and-connect-interface
Except EDF 4.1 and EDF 5 were both working with P2P, never relied on anything like EOS, and they work perfectly fine even to this day. The only thing they need is a main server for the server browser, which is very light and, again, was already working anyway.
The only reason they used EOS is for cross-play. However, there is no cross-play between consoles and PC, so the only possible cross-play on Steam is with the Epic Game Store (and its 3 users). So yeah, completely useless system that will cost them quite a lot.