Epic Games’ metaverse plans go well beyond Fortnite, as Unreal Engine 6 is slated to allow developers to make use of Fortnite skins in any UE6 game–or even to make their own skins that work in Fortnite. Epic revealed this tidbit as part of its State of Unreal presentation on Wednesday, where Tim Sweeney and the gang laid out what is currently the path ahead for the company’s grand project.
Unreal Engine 6, as Epic has described it, is being built for modular interconnectivity between games, essentially establishing the framework for a greater metaverse that developers will build over time. Rather than Fortnite itself being the metaverse, it will eventually just be one part of a larger new “wild west” sort of ecosystem beyond that walled garden. This frees developers from the restraints of working within Fortnite, while still letting them use Fortnite cosmetics and assets if they want to.
“We see this as the first step toward building a shared economy for smart assets: functional assets with logic and functionality that work across games, to recognize players’ time and spending in a better way,” Epic development lead Marcus Wassmer said in a blog post. “In the end, this isn’t really a Fortnite story. It’s about proving that such a mature, complex system can work at scale–and that every game that works with these systems will immediately benefit from them.”
But it’s going to be a little while before any of this actually comes to fruition. Epic is planning to launch an early-access version of Unreal Engine 6 in late 2027, with the full version coming a year or two later. And given the immense scope of the project, delays wouldn’t be surprising.
