Epic wants to let you bring your Fortnite skins to other games

Epic Games has been touting the potential of an interoperable metaverse to YearsAlthough this vision has not yet become a reality. But with Unreal Engine 6, the next major version of its game development engine, Epic plans to take a big step toward that theoretical future: It will allow developers to make games that can use player abilities. fortnite Skins and will allow developers to build their own skins that work with them fortnite.

“We’re tackling this problem first because we want to prove things with a system that’s complex enough to be a meaningful ontological proof of concept, and a system that inherently comes with a lot of value for players by honoring their purchases across an interconnected ecosystem of games,” Markus Wasmer, executive vice president of development at Epic, said. he says in a blog post Related to Epic’s State of Unreal keyword.

If this system succeeds and is widely adopted by developers, it could be really great. I spent more money on fortnite More skins than I care to admit, and I imagine it would be fun to play in games that aren’t fortnite With costumes like John Wick or my favorites Samurai Stormtrooper.

But for that to actually happen, developers will have to do the work to implement support for the systems in their games, which isn’t a guarantee. They’ll likely need some sort of incentive to put the effort into it rather than just opening the door that feeds Epic’s fortnite Ecosystem. And with Epic targeting an early access release for Unreal Engine 6 at the end of 2027 — and the full release coming “12 to 18 months later” — it will be some time before all the tools are available for interested developers to even start implementing ways to allow fortnite Skins in their games.

This is all advertised too fortnite Facing some challenges, Epic has laid off more than 1,000 workers In March Because of going down fortnite correlation. fortnite It’s still very popular — it has 75 million monthly active users, Epic’s Hannah Lowry said on stage. But it’s not as big as it used to be, and Epic is trying to shake things up More game crossovers And a Planned transformation To bring up a Roblox-like “Discover” screen featuring different experiences upon startup fortnite Instead of dropping you in the hallway. And the planned “persistent universe” Epic is building with Disney still hasn’t come to fruition yet to be announced More than two years ago.

Epic also faces opposition to its approach to generative AI. This week it detailed how generative AI can be used to help Making art for fortniteand as part of the unreal news situation, Epic He said that It will add an experimental MCP plugin to Unreal Engine to allow developers to attach LLMs to their projects to help with asset creation and other parts of development. On stage, Epic announced its plan fortnite Crossover features an independent strike Vampire survivorsBut Bonkel, the game’s developer, He said that Given today’s news about Epic’s use of artificial general intelligence to create all kinds of game assets, including Fortnite characters, it will be “reviewing” the collaboration.