We’ve written before about how Roblox has emerged as a prominent player in the metaverse, while other participants like Meta (renamed for the very thing…oops) have backed down from ambitions of owning a share of a vast virtual world where people live second lives–gathering, gaming, socializing, watching content, and shopping. Turns out there’s still another major player who has visions for that world: Epic Games.
The Fortnite owner has dabbled in metaverse-esque events before (remember the Travis Scott concert?), but now it’s rolled out Fab, a one-stop digital asset marketplace that’s designed to give developers the building blocks to homebrew metaverse experiences and video games alike.
Epic Games has owned multiple digital assets stores for years, including Unreal Engine Marketplace, Sketchfab Store, Quixel, and ArtStation Marketplace, but Fab is the first time it’s bringing them all together, connecting people who make digital assets with people who need htem. Creators of assets like 3D character and object models, environments, animations, visual effects, and more can sell them on Fab (with Epic Games taking a 12% cut of each sale), and anyone can buy them.
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Many of these assets are made for use in Epic Games’ own game development engine, Unreal Engine, but there will also be items sold that can be used in other engines, like Unity, and in non-Epic Games video games–like Roblox. Fab’s TOS specifically says developers who buy assets receive a license for them that “enables you to use the assets in any game engine or tool you want.”
How do we know this ties into Epic’s plans for the metaverse? Well, CEO Tim Sweeney said so earlier this month. In an interview with The Verge, Sweeney talked Epic’s plans for the next iteration of its development engine, Unreal Engine 6, and said the company’s goal is to make a powerful, high-end development tool that has Fortnite-like ease of use. Thousands of creators (and brands) use Fortnite Creative to make their own destinations and minigames within the game, and they don’t have to be hardcore programmers to do it.
That accessibility is what Epic Games wants to plug into Unreal Engine 6. And, since its ideal seems to be that a significant portion of people using Unreal Engine 6 to make games won’t be able to (or maybe won’t want to, in the interest of saving time and money) develop unique digital assets of their own, Epic is setting up Fab to be a sprawling virtual shopping mall where they can get everything they need to go from idea to fully functioning game.
Epic also plans to have functionality in Unreal Engine 6 where developers can make games cross-platform with little effort. (It’s currently a lot of effort.) Sweeney told The Verge users will be able to “build an app once and then deploy it as a standalone game for any platform.”
Fab comes in because Epic Games wants asset creators to sell building blocks that can be used by developers across all those platforms. “Having seamless movement of content from place to place is going to be one of the critical things that makes the metaverse work without duplication,” Sweeney said.
If you’re wondering why Epic Games would operate an entire shop letting developers buy assets they may not even use on its proprietary systems, it’s because if Epic Games can make itself the shop for metaverse assets, it could stand to make a serious chunk of change.
Epic seems to have accepted that developers are going to build metaverse destinations and games outside of its Unreal ecosystem—so if it can operate an marketplace that corners the market and becomes one of the biggest destinations for both asset developers and game developers, it stands to keep itself involved, and make money where previously it would’ve made none.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t have a federated way to flow between Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite,” Saxs Persson, Epic’s EVP, told The Verge. “From our perspective, that would be amazing, because it keeps people together and lets the best ecosystem win.”
Considering Roblox pays out hundreds of millions to creators selling in its digital asset marketplace, we figure Epic is seeing big potential dollar signs for Fab and the future of the metaverse.
