Fortnite creator Epic was willing to take Sony to court over Fortnite crossplay between all platforms, CEO Tim Sweeney has revealed.
That’s what Sweeney revealed as part of the ongoing court case between Epic and Google. As part of this case, Epic’s CEO took the stand to testify about the company’s stance on open platforms, and how far he and Epic would be willing to go to get full crossplay support on PlayStation. As most of you will recall, Sony wasn’t a big fan of crossplay until it finally caved in 2018, and announced that it would allow Fortnite crossplay support with Xbox One and Switch. Interestingly enough, earlier that year, Sony said that having crossplay wasn’t a “slam dunk no matter the size of the title”.
As part of his testimony in the Epic/Google case, Sweeney now provided some insight into Epic’s stance in the matter if Sony wouldn’t have allowed crossplay after all. “We were willing to fight them in court if necessary,” the Epic CEO said. As covered by GamesIndustry.biz, this conversation was related to a 2018 e-mail that Sweeney sent to Sony’s Head of Global Partner Development and Relations at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Phil Rosenberg (then Senior Vice President, Head of Global Publisher and Developer Relations).
The e-mail that Epic’s CEO sent read as follows: “Please inform Kodera-san, and please be clear, that Epic will enable full interoperability between all platforms in Fortnite at a timely point in the future … we are prepared to pursue this course with all available resources, wherever it leads us, and for however long.”
Strong words from Sweeney indeed. Luckily, Sony relented sometime later, and Fornite became the first game to support crossplay between full cross-play between mobile, PC, and all major consoles. Several months later, crossplay for Rocket League was also enabled.
