What Does Game Giant EpicGames Love about the Metaverse?

【TL; DR】

1. On the 16th of October 2021, Steam, the world's largest game platform, suddenly informed the chain game developer that it would remove all NFTs and blockchain games in the store. While Epic Games, another gaming giant, remained open to blockchain.
2. The "trifecta" of Epic Games: Fortnite, Unreal Engine, Epic Games store.
3. Epic Games has been deeply invested in the field of the metaverse for several years, and can be said to be a major player in this field.
4. The Unreal Engine will become the first choice for people to create large-scale metaverse scenes in the future, and aims to become the infrastructure powering the whole metaverse.
5. Fortnite is the best platform for Epic Games to test the potential of the metaverse.

On the 16th of October, 2021, Steam, the world's largest gaming platform, suddenly informed the chain game developer that all NFTs and blockchain games in the store would be removed. It is speculated that the reason for Steam's move is not wanting the games on its platform to have practical value. Unlike Steam's explicit rejection of blockchain, Epic Games, another gaming giant, held its arms wide open for blockchain technology.

After Steam removed all blockchain games from its platform, Epic was officially interviewed by The Verge. Although Epic will not use cryptocurrency in its own games or support cryptocurrency payment, it will still welcome other blockchain games to settle in, provided that these games abide by relevant laws, disclose game terms and do a good job in game classification.

Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic, also hinted in his tweet that blockchain technology is a major innovation in the field of Finance and technology.


For a long time, Epic; an industry challenger, has embraced new technologies such as blockchain. For its hundreds of millions of users, Epic has embraced a new frontier and is fast becoming an important player in the field of metaverse. This "preference" for the metaverse may offer an opportunity for Epic Games, an "Atypical gaming giant", to overtake competitors.

History of "Steam Killer"

In 1991, Tim Sweeney, who was then a student at the University of Maryland, founded Epic Games in his parents' home.

In 1998, Epic Games released a game with cross era significance called“Unreal”, which shook the industry with its exquisite modeling and rich special effects. Unreal Engine, the company's famous game engine, was created with “Unreal” at the same time. Later on, Epic Games successively released a series of games such as Unreal Arena and Unreal Competition. The Unreal Engine iterated from version 1.0 to version 4.0 and then to the latest version 5.0, and was widely adopted by the game industry. Epic Games itself gradually developed and grew, and also received $330 million investment from Tencent in 2012. Currently, Tencent is the largest shareholder of Epic Games, accounting for more than 40% of the shares.

In 2017, Fortnite took the gaming industry by storm and became a top tier game with one of the largest user base and revenues in the world. Fortnite was similar to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), and was developed by Epic Games based on its own engine. , It is reported that from 2018 to 2019, Fortnite brought more than $9 billion in revenue to Epic Games.

Now Fortnite has more than 350 million registered users. The release of Fortnite skyrocketed Epic Games from a "game engine company" to a game giant that could not be ignored.

The subsequent large profits also gave Epic Games the confidence to develop other businesses. In 2018, Epic Games announced the launch of its game store of the same name, which ate up more than 15% of the market share from Steam with its rich "free delivery" strategy. So far, the "trifecta" under Epic Games has been fully formed: Fortnite, Unreal Engine and Epic Games Store.

The Journey of Atypical Giant Into the Metaverse

With the explosion of the concept of the metaverse this year, the term metaverse appears more and more in front of us. A large number of companies have rushed into this concept, and even hyped hot spots under the guise of being a taste of the metaverse. In contrast, Epic Games has been deeply invested in the field of the metaverse for several years, which can be said to be a major player in this field.

Let's start with the Unreal Engine, the foundation of Epic Games. For a long time, the Unreal Engine has been the symbol of the highest image quality in the game industry and is favored by many game developers.

Well-known games such as the Mirror's Edge, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Infinity Blade are developed based on this engine. "Immersion" is an indispensable element of the mature metaverse, and the Unreal Engine can provide the realistic 3D picture necessary to create an immersion. In the future, when people create a large-scale metaverse scene, the Unreal Engine will become the first choice, and even the infrastructure of the whole metaverse.


Fortnite is the best platform for Epic Games to test the metaverse. After obtaining a large number of users, Epic Games is gradually moving towards the metaverse by adding new content to the game. Since its inception in 2017 till now, Fortnite has gone from a simple PUBG game, to a large social space with massive amounts of content and rich playing methods. Players can choose and create their own image from countless linked IPs, including Batman and Star Wars, use unique tokens to buy a series of items, and even build their own space in Fortnite to carry out many online activities.


In April 2020, Fortnite cooperated with Travis Scott to hold the "Astronomical" virtual concert, which attracted 12.3 million viewers. At the concert, Scott used motion capture technology to enter the game in the form of a 3D image. Players could control their characters to socialize on the map and interact with artists. In August last year, Fortnite once again held a virtual concert in cooperation with Ariana Grande, which also received a world wide response. Using Fortnite as the platform, Epic Games has gradually established a large-scale 3D virtual world that users can participate in, and is ahead of many competitors in building a metaverse.

Conclusion

As Tim Sweeney said, "for all companies interested in metaverse, such as Epic Games, Roblox, Microsoft and Meta, the next three years will be crucial. This is a competition for 1 billion users. Whoever obtains 1 billion users first will become the leader in formulating metaverse standards in the future."

Last April, Epic Games announced that it had obtained US $1 billion in financing, which will be mainly used to promote its metaverse business interests. In this ongoing race to explore the blue ocean of technology and compete for the right to formulate standards, Epic is likely to become a prominent player.


Author: Edward.H, Gate.io Researcher
*This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment advice.
*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.


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