Boost Your Unreal Engine Game: Best EOS Plugin Options

As an Unreal Game Dev you might have asked yourself how to do a multiplayer game, keep track of your players, have a store or even publish your game on Epic Games Store. Well, the answer to this is EOS (Epic Online Services). These tools are designed to help game dev to implement all sort of features, like Cross platform multiplayer, progression (achievements, player data storage, leaderboards), P2P (peer-to-peer connectivity), game analytics, anti-cheat, title storage, and more.

While you could implement these tools using the SDK provided by Epic Games, or the already implemented plugin on Unreal Engine, these two options require large set up, and lots of knowledge on Networking, API, and C++. They don’t offer functions that are exposed to blueprints, making the process harder to make for Devs that are not as skilled on coding. There is where third party plugins come to in handy. Some plugins we will talk about will help you implement all these features in an easier way or provide useful functionalities to improve the work flow with EOS. Let’s get started!

EIK (EOS Integration Kit)

EIK is a plugin made by Betide Studio to provide game dev with the tools to implement EOS on their games. They also offer support on their discord community, helping devs to implement features to their games. This plugin not only implements the online subsystem, but also implements all the other handy functions like anti-cheat, login with multiple platforms, functions exposed to blueprints, and the Dev Portal login. It is also compatible with their other subsystems like: Edgegap Integration Kit, Steam Integration Kit, and PlayFab Integration Kit.

This plugin has a cost of $54.99 for individual license, or $129.99 for the professional license (Learn more about it on the Fab.com page). While I encourage you to buy the plugin to support the Devs behind it, They also offer it for free on their GitHub, if you want to learn more about that I invite you to enter to their discord https://discord.gg/betidestudio

Link to the Plugin: https://www.fab.com/listings/70689002-04d3-4098-ad9e-62792fe0b669

EOS Online Subsystem

This amazing plugin is created by Redpoint Games it offers all the tools you need to build your game online system, including support for console, all the EOS auth types, unified friends list, and cross-platform support. There are 2 versions of this plugin, one that is free, and the marketplace version, each one of them have different things, so I recommend you to check which one you need using this link. Be mindful that this plugin does not implement Blueprints, so if you require the online subsystem exposed to blueprints, you have to use their Online Subsystem Blueprints plugin.

The price of the marketplace version (the full version) is: $129.99

You can get the plugin in FAB: https://www.fab.com/listings/b900b244-0ff6-49e3-8562-5fc630ba9515

Advanced Sessions Plugin

ASP (Advanced Sessions Plugin) by MordenTral is a tool set for those that want to use any online subsystem from blueprints. This plugin offers blueprints you can use to interact with the online subsystem, and simplify the configuration and manipulation of sessions and data. While there is no official support for EOS specific features (Anti-cheat, player storage, title storage, store, achievements, and a lot of other features), you can use it to control sessions, and logins with the right configuration.

This is an open-source project, you can get the code and compile it yourself or download a precompiled version of the plugin for the engine version you are using!

GitHub: https://github.com/mordentral/AdvancedSessionsPlugin

Precompiled versions: https://vreue4.com/advanced-sessions-binaries

Important Resources

While having plugins to improve your experience with EOS is good, you should always keep in mind some of these official resources, mostly since the all the plugins really on EOS SDK to run. Here I compiled some good resources for you to work with EOS! If you know any other good plugins or resources, put them in the comments!

• Epic Games Dev Portal: https://dev.epicgames.com/en-US

• Online Services Docs: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/dev-portal

• Epic Online Services page: https://onlineservices.epicgames.com/en-US/services

• EOS Community: https://eoshelp.epicgames.com/s/?language=en_US

• Unreal Engine EOS Docs: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/online-services-eos-plugins-in-unreal-engine

• Community EOS Plugin course: https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/courses/1px/unreal-engine-the-eos-online-subsystem-oss-plugin/Lnjn/unreal-engine-introduction

• Druid Mechanics - EOS Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd9m4cG2hnU