Fortnite creator Epic was willing to take Sony to court over Fortnite’s crossplay between all platforms, CEO Tim Sweeney has revealed.

Now that the bar is on Sony anyway, details of another legal case have come to light. All of this was revealed by Sweeney as part of the ongoing court case between Epic and Google. As part of the case, Epic’s CEO took the witness stand to testify about the company’s stance on open platforms. As well as how far he and Epic would go to get full crossplay support for the PlayStation.

As most of you may remember, Sony wasn’t a big fan of crossplay. Until it finally caved in 2018 and announced that it would enable crossplay support for Fortnite with Xbox One and Switch. Interestingly, at the beginning of the 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 has now offered some insight into Epic’s position on the matter if Sony hadn’t allowed crossplay after all.

“We were willing to fight them in court if necessary,” said Epic’s CEO. As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, this conversation is related to a 2018 email Sweeney sent to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s head of global partner development and relations, Phil Rosenberg (then Senior Vice President, Head of Global Publisher and Developer Relations).

The email sent by Epic’s CEO 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 indeed from Sweeney. Fortunately, Sony relented a little later. Fortnite has become the first game to support full crossplay on mobile. Even between PC and all major consoles. A few months later, Rocket League crossplay was also allowed.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz