‘You probably didn’t expect to see me here’: Epic and Unity announce ‘unique’ partnership

Competing engine platforms Unity and Epic Games have announced “a really unique collaboration” which will allow, among other things, games made in Unity to come to Fortnite.

Starting next year, Unity developers will be able to publish games directly into Fortnite, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney announced during the Unite event on Tuesday, thanks to “some really amazing networking technology” built by Unity.

In addition, Unity will be bringing Unreal Engine support to their cross-platform commerce platform, which they say will give Unreal developers more choice for managing their digital catalogs, payment providers, and web shops across PC, mobile, and web.

Sweeney said at Unite: “Recently we got together with Unity and realised that we all share a common view of the need to support fair and open digital platforms… just like the early days of the web, we believe that companies need to work together to build open and interoperable systems.”

Additional details about this partnership and product timing will be shared next year, the pair said.

“We’re excited to partner with Epic Games to create more opportunities for game developers around the world,” said Matt Bromberg, President and CEO, Unity. “Choice and open systems create growth for everyone in the gaming ecosystem.”

Sweeney added: “Just like the early days of the web, we believe that companies need to work together in order to build the open metaverse in a way that’s interoperable and fair. Working alongside Unity we’re helping developers build fun games, reach bigger audiences, and find success.”

Epic Games’ CEO is a long-time proponent of open platforms for video games. Epic and Apple have contested a long-running antitrust legal battle after the former moved to circumvent the latter’s 30% platform fees. Sweeney has also called Steam “assholes” over its own fees charged to developers.