Epic's metaverse layout famous for Fortnite

The Metaverse has received a lot of attention in the past year, including from companies, governments, and even the general public. For example, South Korea has issued a policy to build metaverse cities. There are many big moves at the enterprise level, such as the "All In" Metaverse, Nvidia and Microsoft who are actively deploying the infrastructure of the Metaverse, and domestic players such as Tencent , Baidu, and Alibaba.

Today, let us take a look at the metaverse layout of Epic, a foreign game company that has become popular because of "Fortnite".

About Epic Games

Epic Games (Epic) is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was first founded in 1991 by Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein, and released its first commercial video game, ZZT, that same year. Epic develops Unreal Engine, a commercial game engine that also powers its internally developed video games such as Fortnite and the Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade series. In 2014, Unreal Engine was named the "Most Successful Video Game Engine" by Guinness World Records.

In April 2021, Epic announced that it had received US$1 billion in financing, mainly for the development of the metaverse, and Epic's valuation reached US$28.7 billion. In August 2020, when it completed financing of US$1.78 billion, its valuation was only US$17.3 billion. In eight months, Epic's valuation has risen by 65.9%. Earlier, Tencent acquired 48.4% of the issued share capital of Epic Games for US$330 million in July 2012.

Epic Games released a 3D first-person shooter game in 1998. In 2006, Epic Games announced the best-selling game "Gears of War" based on the Xbox 360 game platform. In 2018, it launched the Epic Games Store, the beta version of Epic Online Services in 2019 and the acquisition of the social video application Houseparty, and 2020 Launched Epic Games Publishing.

Released in 2017, Fortnite is a third-person shooter game. Different from traditional shooting games, in "Fortress Night", players can use the collected materials to build houses to resist enemy attacks, and even create their own islands and maps, because of these innovative features The gameplay has also changed the player's perception of shooting games, and it has made many hardcore players unable to put it down, so it has set many shooting game records.

Apple has a recent lawsuit with Epic Games, so we can know some of Epic Games' financial situation. Epic Games released a financial statement to the court that "Fortnite" generated as much as $9 billion in revenue for Epic from 2018 to 2019. In April 2020, Travis Scott, a well-known American rapper, held a virtual concert in "Fortnite". At that time, the number of online players exceeded 12.3 million, setting a record high. In March 2019, Epic Games announced that the number of "Fortnite" players was approximately 250 million; in May 2020, Epic announced that the number of registered "Fortnite" players had exceeded 350 million.

Fortnite Online Concert

Epic Games also released the game's Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine was launched in 1998, and after several iterations, the latest version, Unreal Engine 5, was finally launched in May 2021. Unreal Engine is the world's largest and most advanced open real-time 3D creation platform. Provide game developers with the core technologies, data generation tools and basic support they need. Unreal Engine provides game developers with a foundation for visual game design and can be used to build, test, and publish games of all types. Many game companies such as Electronic Arts, Sony, Ubisoft, Jiuyou, etc. use Epic Games' Unreal Engine to develop some games.

The Epic Games Store platform is a game platform launched by Epic Games, referred to as EGS, currently has more than 500 games, similar to the Steam game platform. The Epic Games Store platform provides more than 300 million users with a one-stop game download function. According to the financial report released by Epic Games, players will spend 700 million US dollars on the Epic Games Store platform in 2020.

Partnered with LEGO and financed the development of Metaverse

On April 7, 2022, Lego, a well-known national toy manufacturer, and Epic Games announced their cooperation to develop a child-centered virtual world (metaverse), with the aim of creating an immersive and creative digital world for children of all ages .

And on April 11, 2022, Epic announced that it had raised $2 billion in a round of financing to advance the company's vision of building a virtual world and supporting its continued growth. Epic’s funding round includes existing investor Sony Group Inc., as well as KIRKBI, the family holding and investment firm behind the Lego Group. The two parties will each invest $1 billion in Epic. In fact, as early as July 2020, Sony injected $250 million into Epic.

In this regard, Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney said that when Epic reimagines the future of entertainment and games, Epic needs to cooperate with partners who share Epic's vision. Epic discovered this in its collaboration with Sony and KIRKBI. The investment will accelerate Epic's work to build out the Metaverse and create spaces where gamers can have fun with friends, brands can create creative and immersive experiences, and creators can build communities and thrive in them.

Kenichiro Yoshida, chairman, president and CEO of Sony Corporation, said that as a creative entertainment company, it is pleased to invest in Epic to deepen Sony's relationship in the metaverse, a space where creators and users share time. It is believed that Epic's expertise, including its powerful game engine, combined with Sony's technology will accelerate various processes, such as the development of new digital experiences and virtual production programs in sports.

The Metaverse Is a Trillion-Dollar Opportunity

Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney is perhaps one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Metaverse since Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Today, Fortnite has rapidly grown from a popular multiplayer game to an online space for people to socialize and big-name musicians to host virtual concerts. Fortnite competes with Microsoft's Minecraft (My World) and Roblox 's first game of the same name in the metaverse, pursuing the vision of the metaverse in the virtual environment, hoping to become the first person to eat the big cake of the metaverse.

On November 18, 2021, Tim Sweeney said that in the next few decades, the Metaverse has the potential to become part of the world economy worth trillions of dollars. said the next three years will be critical. It's a race to get to a billion users, and whoever gets to a billion users first will be the leader in setting the standard. And the metaverse is a term similar to the Internet, and no company can actually own it.

Tim Sweeney also revealed two strategic layouts of Epic in the Metaverse. The first is scaling Fortnite from a game with 60 million monthly active users to an experience that could reach 1 billion in the future. Furthermore, Epic hopes to use content creation tools such as 3D graphics-based Unreal Engine to enable companies across the industry to render 3D in real time. Epic is currently working to build a suite of digital assets that can be deployed in film and television, as well as in real-time gaming, from high-end consoles to low-end smartphones. Tim Sweeney said that while he doesn't think specialized hardware like augmented or virtual reality glasses is necessary to access the Metaverse, Epic is working with all designers and manufacturers of such devices.

Epic's exploration of the metaverse

In fact, Epic has already begun to lay the foundation of many metaverses in "Fortnite". The hit multiplayer game is essentially a platforming space on the metaverse concept. It's a massively social space that has grown far beyond its original role as a fighting game. Players can create their own avatar, choosing from countless IP skin collections. They use the game's unique currency, V-Bucks, to purchase items that only exist in the digital space. Players gather to watch concerts, movies, etc. in the game.

But "Fortnite" is still not the complete metaverse, it is only a part of the metaverse. Epic also invested in Core, a creation platform that lets players create games and digital worlds, an investment that shows it still wants to continue expanding the scope of virtual worlds through player-built methods.

It's worth noting that Epic isn't the only company taking this approach. Roblox, the first hit in the metaverse, has gradually evolved from a kid's favorite game to a full-fledged global platform. The way these two companies build and expand the metaverse will bring some pressure to Meta, because they both allow users to participate in the construction of the metaverse.

In addition to allowing users to participate in the construction of virtual worlds, Epic also introduced popular IPs such as Batman, Star Wars and Halo into "Fortnite", making the skin or avatars of the entire world more diversified. This will also attract relevant IP fans to enter, and will also make the entire virtual world more vivid.

"Fortress Night" game scene

Lowering the bar for Unreal Engine

Today's mainstream game engines (third-party) include Epic's Unreal Engine and Unity Engine. In contrast, the Unity engine is simpler and easier to use than the Unreal Engine, but the technical level is not as good as the Unreal Engine. This has led to the fact that Unity is currently the mainstream engine for mobile games (mobile games), while Unreal Engine is the engine used by relatively complex high-quality games.

Now Epic is lowering the bar for Unreal Engine, making it more accessible. If you want to enter the metaverse, you need more developers to participate in the spontaneous construction of the metaverse, just like Roblox. The ultimate goal of Unreal Engine is to make content creators more productive. Developing games is a time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive task. And an easy-to-use Unreal Engine can speed up game development. In order to achieve the above goals, Epic needs to spend a lot of effort to make Unreal Engine easier to use and easy to use, so as to attract more beginners to use it, so as to continuously create virtual worlds, attract more users to participate, and form a positive cycle.

Epic is doing this by partnering with other companies like Manticore Games. Manticore Games is the developer and publisher of the game creation platform Core. On April 1, 2022, it completed a $100 million Series C financing to continue the development of its user-generated game creation platform Core. The financing was led by XN, with other investors including Vision Fund 2, London Venture Partners, Epic Games, Benchmark and others.

Core is like Unreal Engine's version of Roblox. However, compared to Roblox, Core's modeling is more detailed. Core hopes to use the high performance and expressiveness of Unreal Engine to provide easy-to-use tools for developers who want to create a more realistic virtual world with rich special effects. Similar to Roblox, for the creation on the Core platform, the platform will share 50/50 with the developers, encouraging more developers to create on the platform.

Embrace blockchain and NFT

On November 11, 2021, Epic Games stated that its Epic Games Store platform will welcome games using blockchain technology. However, the premise is that these games need to comply with relevant laws, disclose their terms, and have appropriate age ratings. Compared with its rival Steam, Epic Games is ahead of the game platform in terms of blockchain technology. On October 16, 2021, game developer SpacePirate stated that its software platform Steam prohibits the use of blockchain technology in games and prohibits users from exchanging NFT or Crypto in games.

Epic Games stated that it will set some restrictions to regulate blockchain transaction activities. In addition, the Epic Games Store platform will work closely with developers to learn more about how they will use blockchain technology in their games.

In January 2022, Tim Sweeney stated that blockchain technology and NFTs are the "most logical path" to a fully emerging metaverse (virtual world), but due to factors such as transaction costs and the speculation that constitutes cryptocurrencies today, they are not durable. The dream of a digital world may still be out of reach. In the coming decades, a new era of virtual presence will mark the next great milestone for people as a networked species.