In an interview with The Verge, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney outlined his big plans for the rest of the decade, and why Epic had to lay off 16% of its workforce last year to make it happen. The top line is that Sweeney still sees promise for a “metaverse” of interoperable assets and marketplaces between Fortnite and other Unreal Engine games/initiatives, like a planned Unreal “persistent universe” owned by Disney.
“Last year, before Unreal Fest, we were spending about a billion dollars a year more than we were making,” Sweeney said. That’s since receded to just “a bit” more than Epic earns in revenue. For perspective, Forbes estimated the company’s revenue to be north of $6 billion in 2022, while the Epic Game Store self-reported $950 million in sales in its 2023 year in review. Like Microsoft, The Embracer Group, and many other publishers, Epic balled out in the go-go years of the pandemic and NFTs before having to tighten its belt amid the current industry contraction.
But the lofty ambitions remain, with a focus on better linking the Unreal Engine proper with the more approachable Unreal Editor For Fortnite, the evolved form of the Fortnite Creative tools mapmakers have been putting to great effect in all manner of custom modes and maps. “The real power will come when we bring these two worlds together so we have the entire power of our high-end game engine merged with the ease of use that we put together in [Unreal Editor for Fortnite],” said Sweeney. “That’s going to take several years. And when that process is complete, that will be Unreal Engine 6.”
Sweeney wants developers using Unreal to be able to “build an app once and then deploy it as a standalone game for any platform,” and also be able to incorporate their work into Fortnite or any other Unreal game. One of Epic’s initiatives along these lines is a planned “persistent universe” owned by Disney but compatible with Fortnite: “We announced that we’re working with Disney to build a Disney ecosystem that’s theirs, but it fully interoperates with the Fortnite ecosystem.
“And what we’re talking about with Unreal Engine 6 is the technology base that’s going to make that possible for everybody.”
And I gotta say, that vision doesn’t appeal to me any more now than it did at the height of metaverse mania. But while there are a ton of serious impediments to making it happen, these aren’t the bong rip musings about 3 billion AI-empowered developers from EA CEO Andrew Wilson or Ubisoft’s flaccid attempts to sell Ghost Recon NFTs—Epic has the resources and industry ubiquity to at least get this initiative off the ground.
That huge Fortnite war chest immediately springs to mind—this is a company engaging in a multi-front legal war with the likes of Google and Apple without breaking a sweat—but even more critical is that Unreal Engine is everywhere. UE3 already felt like a juggernaut 15 years ago, but Unreal Engine 5 has increasingly found a place in Hollywood as a tool for creating CGI in movies. Unreal is also seeing a lot of adoption in the indie and double-A space while some major developers known for their in-house engines have dropped those tools in favor of Epic’s middleware—CD Projekt and now Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) are the ones that most surprised me.
At the same time, you could drive a truck through the figurative gap between “I’m using Unreal Engine” and “I’m an enthusiastic partner in the Unreal metaverse.” There are also other, competing visions for what the next five to ten years of gaming will look like, and the big elephant in the room here is Valve. The Verge quotes Epic EVP Sax Persson as saying “people are not dogmatic about where they play” based on Epic’s own surveys, but has he seen the way people talk about the Epic Store vs. Steam?
My own feelings about the store’s usability and how a third party alternative launcher developed by some guy is preferable to multi-billion dollar Epic’s own program aside, Epic’s huge investment into the storefront has not significantly altered the PC launcher balance of power—Fortnite aside, EGS exclusive games always seem to actually break out and sell well only once they come to Steam a year later, and even the critical darling, Epic-published Alan Wake 2 hadn’t managed to turn a profit six months after launch. We say this not as fans of Valve but a sober observation: Steam keeps on winning.
I’m with PCG online editor Fraser Brown: Fortnite isn’t the future, it’s an anomaly. But we’ll see what that future holds. If I’m cyber-Goku doing the Griddy in the greater Fortnite-Disney-Unreal metaverse come 2029, I’ll eat a big helping of Unreal Engine 6-rendered crow before getting domed by a Mickey Mouse armed with a Barrett .50 cal.