Epic Games Store will become more convenient for communication. Group chats and player cards will appear in it

The Epic Games team decided to take up the improvement of social functions in their store. For example, now they want to add group chats to it. But personal messages will be removed for a while.

The company told about the upcoming changes in the official blog. As Epic wrote, some of the new features will work in EGS this month, others — during 2021.

One of the key innovations is the group system, thanks to which players will be able to create shared text and voice chats. Moreover, these chats will not have a single organizer, and participants will be able to leave the conversation and come back at any time (even if the one who first started the conversation is no longer online). In addition, each player will be able to customize sound and video for themselves in conversations, as well as invite other people to the group or close access to it.

Epic is also going to add an option with “active group windows” to the group system. According to the developers, these will be special separate windows for the group with which a person interacts a lot. It is unclear what exactly can be done in these windows. But the owners of the store promised that there will be “a lot of functions for communication and games.”

It is not known exactly when the group system will be added to EGS. Epic did not share the exact date, so it is unlikely that the option should be expected in the near future.

What else will appear in EGS:

• player cards. In fact, it’s something like a drop-down menu with a couple of functions. During the conversation, the user can click on the interlocutor and see his card. With its help, the player, if desired, will be able to “manage friendship” (probably add or remove from friends), view the interlocutor’s friends, join his groups and invite to his;
• improved search. Search queries will work more accurately. It will be possible to see, for example, the number of mutual friends from users. Or view search results on other platforms;
• collapsed view. A reduced communication panel that will notify you of an invitation to a game or a friend request;
• “do not disturb.” A mode that disables unnecessary alerts during the game.

These four functions will be added to the store in March. At the same time, the developers plan to temporarily disable private messages. The function with messages will be returned to EGS after it is adapted to the group system.

Epic Games Store opened in 2018. Now more than 160 million people are registered in the store. In 2020, they spent about $700 million in EGS.