Fortnite Now Supports Unity Games

In a surprising move that bridges two major industry competitors, Epic Games has announced a partnership with Unity to enable games built on the Unity engine to be published directly within Fortnite. This collaboration marks a pivotal expansion for Fortnite, transforming it from a singular game into a vast, interconnected platform hosting a diverse array of experiences. The initiative is designed to dramatically increase the number of games available to Fortnite’s massive player base, placing Unity-made titles alongside those built with Epic’s own Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).

Epic’s Chief Executive, Tim Sweeney, framed the alliance as a necessary step toward building an open and fair metaverse. He emphasized that cooperation between companies is essential for creating an interoperable digital world, much like the foundational principles of the early internet. This vision involves turning Fortnite into a major 3D social space where users can jump between countless experiences with friends. For years, Epic has been steering Fortnite in this direction, heavily promoting creator-made content and designing the in-game discovery interface to feel similar to scrolling through a video platform like YouTube. Players can even preview these experiences on the web and purchase cosmetic items directly from their browsers.

Currently, Fortnite operates as a closed ecosystem. Creators are restricted to using Epic’s proprietary tools, and they cannot easily export their creations to other platforms via Unreal Engine or import games built on rival engines. Sweeney has long been a vocal proponent of engine interoperability, believing it is fundamental to his broader vision for the platform’s future.

The push to diversify Fortnite’s content library has already shown significant results. By the end of the previous year, the platform boasted 70,000 creators who had published close to 200,000 individual “islands,” which is Fortnite’s term for player experiences. However, the potential influx from Unity is on another scale entirely. The Unity Editor reports over 1.2 million monthly active creators. Even if a small percentage of these developers choose to bring their projects to Fortnite, it would represent a monumental addition to the platform’s content.

According to Matt Bromberg, President and CEO of Unity, the plan is to roll out support for Unity games inside Fortnite sometime next year. This partnership could provide developers, especially smaller studios facing a challenging market, with a vital new channel to reach audiences and generate revenue. While this move could further cement Fortnite’s position as an industry titan, Sweeney envisions a much more decentralized future. He imagines a day when the Fortnite client acts as a gateway to externally controlled experiences, similar to how a web browser navigates to independent websites, with Epic having no operational or financial involvement.

For the time being, all experiences, whether built with Fortnite’s native tools or with Unity, will undergo a review process to ensure they meet content rating standards and function properly. Sweeney indicated that as the system matures into a fully open ecosystem, reviews would likely only apply to content hosted directly by Epic, allowing third parties to publish freely.

This integration will substantially widen the developer pool. Sweeney pointed out that creating for Fortnite currently requires starting from the ground up; developers cannot simply deploy an existing Unreal Engine game into the platform. Interestingly, he noted that the ability to publish Unity games into Fortnite is expected to arrive well before a similar capability exists for standalone Unreal Engine games, a feature tentatively planned for a future Unreal Engine 6 release.

A secondary aspect of the announcement involves Unity’s commerce platform. Unity will add support for Unreal Engine to its recently unveiled commerce management system, which allows developers to handle their digital storefronts across multiple platforms from within the Unity Engine. This was initially presented as a solution to simplify the complexities of dealing with various storefronts and payment systems.

Bromberg stated that adding Unreal Engine support gives developers greater flexibility in how they build and manage their stores. He and Sweeney are in firm agreement that providing developers with more choices, more places to build, and greater control over their own destinies is the most critical contribution they can make to the health of the gaming ecosystem.

(Source: The Verge)