Two weeks after its reveal, Runescape Dragonwilds, the MMORPG’s spinoff survival game, is out in the world. If you’ve jumped into the high fantasy world of Gielinor, chances are you’ve encountered a somewhat perplexing login screen that talks about linking your Steam account to Epic Games. To dissuade concerns and temper confusion, creative director Rick ‘Mod Rook’ Turek confirms to PCGamesN that linking your accounts isn’t mandatory, and that the “empty accounts” mentioned in the terms of service are Dragonwilds specific, and can be removed at any time.
When you boot up Runescape Dragonwilds, you’re met with a request to link your ‘Epic Account Services Basic Profile’ to your existing Steam account to play online. Immediately, some players assumed that you needed to download the Epic Games launcher and create an account to experience the survival game in multiplayer, while others were left perplexed over the idea of an “empty account.”
Speaking to PCGamesN, Turek explains that you won’t require the Epic launcher or an Epic account to play online, and that these “empty accounts” can be amended at any time, and are exclusive to Dragonwilds.
“The main reason we’re using [Epic Games Online Services] is because it’s an out-of-the-box feature from Unreal that allows us to do cross-platform, crossplay, and cross-saves,” he tells me. “Something we have in our long-term roadmap is, of course, other platforms, and this essentially allows us to grandfather anyone from the game if they want to play with their friends later on.
“We’ve tried to make the process as seamless and frictionless as possible, so in-game, when you see the Epic Online Services screen, if you press play and you want to play online you absolutely can. It creates a ghost account, which does not take your email, password, or any information. It creates an ID, and that ID is tagged with Dragonwilds and Steam to essentially allow you to play later on on different platforms.
“We can confirm that, if your accounts are tied to your Steam, they can be overridden, and they can be removed,” he continues. “We have already anticipated this, and we have a patch coming on day ten, which will be a button that essentially removes that so you can go back to just playing offline if you want. If you don’t want to go online and you don’t want to remove the online services, you can absolutely remove it.
“They are single use, as far as we know, it isn’t like every game on Steam will use this dummy ID. We are confirming exactly with Epic, but we’ll be adding the remove feature either way.”
When I ask if this is likely to change, Turek notes that “because of things like Helldivers 2, we know that people have their backs up when it comes to different account sign-ins. It isn’t necessarily the same: we aren’t asking you to sign up to an account and provide your personal information to play our game – that isn’t what we’re trying to do here. It’s essentially trying to provide players with a way, which we thought was really fun, to play with their friends on Xbox and PlayStation and even carry your save over if you wanted to.
“There can be discussions in the future where we look at other solutions to do the same thing, but this service was out of the box; it’s one of the benefits of Unreal, so that’s the first place we looked.”
If you’re diving into Emberfall and taking on its huge, scaly beasties, we have a list of all of the current Runescape Dragonwilds skills, as well as all of the Runescape Dragonwilds spells to get you started.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. Alternatively, if you’re looking to recruit some fellow adventurers to help you explore the Dragonwilds, why not join our community Discord server and make some new friends?
