The online game Fortnite earns Epic a ton of money. Epic is not only attacking Valve’s Steam platform with the revenues from Fortnite but also its direct competitor in game engines, Unity. The Unity CEO speaks of bribery.
This is the situation: Since 2018, Epic has been making a fortune thanks to the cash shop of Fortnite: Battle Royale. Players buy skins and the Battle Pass – the revenues are gigantic.
In 2018, Fortnite is said to have made around 3 billion US dollars in profit.
Epic uses this money to secure advantages in other areas of the gaming market and to expand them.
There is a lot of talk about how Epic is building competition to Steam with its Epic Games Store and securing exclusive titles here.
This is tangible for the players. It directly affects them when they can no longer go to The Division 2 on Steam, but have to install a new launcher instead.
But there is also a competition battle with the company Unity regarding engines. And this could ultimately influence which engine future games will use and how they will look.
What are engines? The game engine is the foundation for games and contains the tools with which developers build their games.
Many large companies develop their own engines internally. Smaller teams rely on established large engines. They obtain a license and share the profits with the engine developer if their game becomes a hit.
These are the competitors:
- Epic produces the Unreal Engine. Many large games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Rocket League, or all three Mass Effect titles run on it.
- Unity produces the Unity Engine. Games like Escape from Tarkov, Overcooked 2, Shadowgun Legends, Albion Online, Hearthstone, Pokémon GO, and many mobile titles run on it.
Unity CEO compares the fight to Coke vs. Pepsi
This is what the Unity CEO says now: In an interview with Venturebeat, Unity CEO John Riccitiello talks about the situation.
He says:
“Today alone, six people told me they were bribed to switch to the Unreal Engine. In some way, they were given money to switch engines.”
For him, this is a strange situation:
“Imagine you are a Coca-Cola drinker and go to the supermarket, and someone offers you 10 dollars to buy a Pepsi.
What does that say about Pepsi? That’s a little creepy.”
After that, Riccitiello says that the CEO of Epic, Tim Sweeney, is an honorable man whom he has known and respected for years. He surely only wants to do what he thinks is right.
People at Unity itself have an open platform. Developers can use any services they want.
Riccitiello says he thinks they provide developers all the advantages they can give them without directly bribing them. He finds it somewhat unappetizing.
What does Riccitiello mean by bribery? Epic has launched two “funds” or “scholarship pools” that can be disbursed to developer teams working with the Unreal Engine:
- 100 million dollars are in a general fund for teams – as long as they use the Unreal Engine
- 25 million dollars are directly available for teams, who work with SpatialOS technology and switch from Unity to Unreal Engine
This is probably what Riccitiello means by bribery. The special fund for SpatialOS came about after the company behind SpatialOS, Improbable, and Unity publicly fell out.
Public conflict between two major engine providers
What lies behind it: The interview with Venturebeat is full of jabs at Epic. Riccitiello praises his own engine and the outstanding work of the technicians there: He frames it as if Unity is now not only more accessible than the Unreal Engine (which it has always been), but now also technically superior.
It is said that Epic probably has to spend money because they do not want to lose their position as an engine provider and become a pure content company with Fortnite: After all, Unity is about 3-5 times larger on PC and consoles and about 50 times larger on mobile.
You can sense in the interview that Riccitiello is thinking strategically. He works:
- on Unity’s image: the better, more accessible, more successful, and open engine
- and on Epic’s image: worse engines, but more money from Fortnite
Throughout, he constantly praises Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and repeatedly emphasizes how much he personally respects him.
