Epic Games has rolled out 'Epic Parties', a fresh voice chat feature built to span across Fortnite, the Epic Games Launcher, the Epic Games Store (PC, Mac, iOS, Android), and the Epic Games App (iOS, Android).

Following the text chat feature introduced into the Epic ecosystem last year, this new launch expands the support range so that users can form parties and chat in real-time with mates across entirely different devices and Epic platform environments.

With Epic Parties, players can tap into voice chat across a much wider variety of setups. A user hanging out in an Epic Party on PC can chat away with a mate playing Fortnite on a console or someone running the Epic mobile app. Plus, the mobile app lets you run things in the background so you can keep chatting on the move.

Switching devices or games won't drop your voice chat either. If you hop into Fortnite while chatting on the PC launcher or the Epic mobile app, options are there to transition your audio seamlessly without a hitch. You can even keep chatting with your party mates while minimizing the launcher to play other PC games from the Epic Games Store, and when a mate accepts your invite, they will automatically join the same lobby once Fortnite fires up.

To jump into an Epic Party, just send an 'Invite to Party' to an online mate from your friends list on the Epic Games Launcher, Fortnite, or the Epic mobile app, or simply hit 'Join' on a mate already in a party. If you are chilling in a group text chat, tapping the 'Start Party' button lets you instantly drag your chatting mates into a voice chat. Along with the usual player muting, blocking, and reporting features, Epic Games has also added a direct 'Voice Reporting' tool right inside Epic Parties for when community guidelines look like they are being broken.

Epic Games plans to use the launch of Epic Parties to speed up building an open ecosystem where social connections and in-game purchases can link across multiple games. Later this year, social avatar features will expand outside of Fortnite so mates and party members can spot those avatars no matter where you happen to be. These social features are also heading to Rocket League next year when it transitions to Unreal Engine 6. Looking further ahead, the plan is to empower all developers to use these features by 2027, regardless of platform, store, or engine type.

You can dig up all the juicy details about Epic Parties over at the Official Epic Games Store Blog.