Dauntless will be an Epic Games exclusive on PC

The Epic Games store has nabbed many awesome exclusives recently in its attempts to compete with Steam. Its latest acquisition is the free-to-play multiplayer monster slayer Dauntless, which will be heading to the online storefront when it fully launches. This means that it will be ditching its own launcher in favour of the Epic Games store, and players will need to create Epic accounts if they want to keep playing on PC.

Announced at the Game Awards, Dauntless’ developer Phoenix Labs, the migration to the E pic Games Store will coincide with Dauntless’ release on Xbox One and PS4. Existing beta players will have to download the Epic client and create an Epic account in order to continue playing once the standalone Dauntless client vanishes. The developer recommends making an Epic account as early as possible, as if an existing Epic account user has the same username as your Dauntless username, you won’t be able to keep it. The move to Epic is receiving some mixed reactions on the official forums.

The account migration process will be strictly opt-in, however; Phoenix Labs will not be sharing any Dauntless player information with Epic without their permission. The developers have produced an FAQ answering questions players might have about the changeover process to the Epic Games store.

The main reason for partnering with Epic Games is cross-play benefits; Phoenix Labs envisions Dauntless as having all of the cross-play functionality as Epic Games’ Fortnite, and wants to use Epic’s services so that players across platforms can interact seamlessly.

“When we started building Dauntless over four years ago, we had a vision: No matter where you were in the world or which platform you were playing on, you would be able to play with your friends,” says Phoenix Labs. “Epic Games blazed a trail by delivering the first game with true cross-play on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, mobile, and Nintendo Switch. We are grateful to partner with them on Dauntless.”  

Phoenix Labs’ cross-platform plans for Dauntless are ambitious, and hopefully they come to fruition. Whilst Sony has previously been somewhat reticent to support cross-platform play on the PS4, Sony has allowed it on games like Fortnite and Rocket League.  Hopefully it will have full multiplayer functionality on all platforms, and players can hunt Behemoths together on any platform they choose. Epic Games has found themselves another cool exclusive title to help them stand out in the online PC game distribution market.

Dauntless is currently available on PC via its launcher, but will be available on the Epic Store, PS4 and Xbox One later this year.