Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has revealed that Epic will release the Unreal Editor for Fortnite later this year. “The full capabilities you have seen [in Unreal Engine] was opened up so that anyone can create very high-quality game code and content and implement it into Fortnite without having to make a deal with us,” Sweeney says in a new interview with FastCompany. “It’s open to everyone.”
What exactly this means can probably best be summed up as Roblox-ifying the Fortnite creator ecosystem. Sweeney is a huge fan of how Roblox works, and despite having a lower media profile than Fortnite, it’s one of the only real ‘metaverse’ contenders out there, and its appeal lies almost entirely in the content created by it. Username.
“Our goal is to make it a first-class point of sale to reach consumers, just like mobile app stores and consoles and Steam as ways to reach users. Now people are also looking at Fortnite and Roblox, as ways to reach users. Along with that, we’re building an economy, and it’s going to support creators who actually build businesses around their work and make higher profits from the commerce that comes from people playing their content.”
The interesting part is whether Fortnite will take a different approach to rewarding creators. Sweeney is absolutely outspoken about gatekeepers charging big fees and has certainly put his money where his mouth is (Epic is involved in several actions against the tech giants, all related to antitrust issues over distribution channels). The big criticism of Roblox that really stands is that he financially exploits creators by keeping a large portion of the profits from their work. So a low commission, or even no commission at all, seems like an open goal for Fortnite.
Sweeney really believes in the metaverse, and don’t take my word for it. Last year, a court ruled that he really meant everything he said about it in the Epic versus Apple antitrust case: “The court generally finds Mr. Sweeney’s personal beliefs about the future of the metaverse to be sincere.” When Sweeney insists you ordered a Gucci top after checking it out in AR, he means it.
“It’s a shame the metaverse is so overrated right now,” says Sweeney. “There’s all this gas and blockchain and this, but you add up the users and we find [there are] About 600 million people playing metaverse types of experiences socially with their friends.”
Sweeney’s argument is, essentially, that people are misunderstanding the metaverse. She talks about it in terms of a long, ongoing project that is made up of multiple different threads and open to all companies, with no gatekeepers, but she is clear-eyed about the fact that it will be a battle to realize that.
“That’s the big focus of antitrust efforts around the world: ensuring that every market participant can fairly compete in their market without monopoly ties,” says Sweeney. “That’s going to pave the way for the open metaverse. Without that, even if you were to build the open metaverse, Apple and Google would still end up dictating all the terms to everyone.
“I think it’s not only the biggest economic problem and the world economy right now, I also think you can’t have a free world if you don’t have freedom online and freedom on platforms. If you have two corporations that control all world speech and bow down to governments, especially oppressive governments, to act as agents on their behalf and spy on users and sources of opinion and dissent, then I think the world you end up in is not one we’d want to live in. It would be a place pretty horrible. So I think it’s a first-class social issue that we’re not letting any of these giant megacorporations control online commerce, speech, and control the metaverse. Really.”
The full interview is worth reading.– You can say what you want about Sweeney, but he’s more blunt than most big tech CEOs and he clearly means what he says. He’s also honest about the fact that certain ideas, like the universal ownership of avatars, may be great but they’re still pipe dreams.
“Unfortunately right now [crypto is] bundled together with a lot of speculation and a lot of outright scams,” Sweeney says. “And a lot of efforts are scam by construction in the sense that what they’re after doesn’t achieve a plausible version of stated goals. You know, like the blockchain avatar economies, for example, there are a ton of companies that aspire to make avatars that you own universally, but none of them that I’ve come across, not a single one, has made any effort to encourage actual adoption of these avatars by any real game or ecosystem. They just want to build this thing and sell avatars to people, but in practice they are completely useless.
“I strongly believe there will be a multi-trillion dollar economy around digital goods in the future. But I think a lot of the cryptocurrency effort, especially when it comes to the gaming space, doesn’t address that utility issue. They’re showing you products. you can’t do anything with except say you own it. You can cryptographically prove you own it, but who cares?”
It’s a good point, because no game company has given a good answer to that question. Despite this, Sweeney believes the technology will be something of a “backbone” in the future, even if it’s not perceived as it is today, so the Epic Games Store will likely “welcome games that use blockchain technology.” “.