The partnership will also involve Unity bringing in support for Unreal Engine to its cross-platform commerce platform. The announcement for this happened at Unity’s Annual Developer Conference – Unite – and will provide more choices for developers that make use of Unreal Engine when it comes to managing various things like payment providers, digital catalogues, and web shops across PC, mobile and web.

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

“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,” said Epic Games CEO and founder Tim Sweeney. “Working alongside Unity we’re helping developers build fun games, reach bigger audiences, and find success.”

This partnership was likely the result of both Epic and Unity wanting to compete with one of the biggest UGC-based (user generated content) titles in the world – Roblox. Epic had previously taken this step when it had announced Unreal Editor for Fortnite back in March 2023. Through this initiative, Epic had essentially opened the doors to just about any developer to make their own video games that can then be published directly into Fortnite.

Sweeney had previously also spoken about how the major next step in engine development for Epic would be to bring Unreal Engine and Fortnite together to an even greater extent. In an interview from earlier this year, Sweeney confirmed that development at the company had been split into two teams – one for Unreal Engine 5, and another for Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

“The idea is that the shipping version gains more and more features over time, but maintaining backwards compatibility with old versions and continuing to improve and approach the ultimate version of it as we go,” said Sweeney. “And we’ve been doing this experiment entirely within the world of Unreal Editor for Fortnite for now. We want to test this and iterate with Fortnite creators in just the metaverse usage case before we make it available to all of our partners using Unreal Engine for all of their projects.”

Ultimately, these two teams coming together will end up forming what Sweeney believes to be the foundations for an Unreal Engine 6. “It’s a few years away, we don’t have an exact time frame, but we could be seeing preview versions of it perhaps 2 to 3 years from now. And we’re making continuous progress towards it,” he said.

In the interview, Sweeney spoke about how Epic Games is working on quite a few things simultaneously. Unreal Engine 5 itself, for instance, currently has split into two versions: Unreal Engine 5, and Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

“The idea is that the shipping version gains more and more features over time, but maintaining backwards compatibility with old versions and continuing to improve and approach the ultimate version of it as we go,” said Sweeney. “And we’ve been doing this experiment entirely within the world of Unreal Editor for Fortnite for now. We want to test this and iterate with Fortnite creators in just the metaverse usage case before we make it available to all of our partners using Unreal Engine for all of their projects.”

Sweeney describes Unreal Engine 6 as being the nexus point for all of Epic Games’ work on developing the two different forks of Unreal Engine 5. According to him, all of the features from the main Unreal Engine, including the use of C++ as its main programming language of choice, as well as all of the new features coming to the engine through Unreal Editor for Fortnite, will ultimately come together in Unreal Engine 6.

“And so the place where all these different threads of development come together is Unreal Engine 6,” he said. “It’s a few years away, we don’t have an exact time frame, but we could be seeing preview versions of it perhaps 2 to 3 years from now. And we’re making continuous progress towards it.”

“The aim for UE6 is to bring the best of both worlds together,” he continued. “Much easier gameplay programming for the Fortnite community and for licensees, but more scalability to large-scale simulations of all sorts, greater use of use, meaning it will be easier to hire programmers who are familiar with and experienced with the thing. But also ensure that every game developer has the full deployment capabilities. So they can build a game once and then ship it anywhere.”

“The ultimate version of this enables a game developer to build a game of any sort, and ship it to both Fortnite as a Fortnite Island that players can go into… or ship as a standalone game, or both. If they ship as a standalone game, they shouldn’t be missing out on the open economy either because in this time frame, we’ll have opened up the Fortnite item economy to third-party developers of all sorts.”

Ultimately, this likely means that Unreal Engine 6, when it is released, will act as more of a refinement over its predecessor rather than being a whole new engine altogether with game-changing new features. In contrast, with Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games had emphasised the engine’s new capabilities when it comes to visual fidelity with technologies like Lumen and Nanite. Unreal Engine 4 in the past was also a big step forward from its predecessor, making multiplatform game development even easier with a host of (at the time) new features.

Considering the success of Fortnite, we will likely see the first signs of Unreal Engine 6 through the popular free-to-play game.

Unreal Editor for Fortnite is essentially a way for players to develop their own video games and experiences that can then be published directly into Fortnite. The software works alongside Fortnite‘s Creative toolset, and allows for entire teams to work together on their own test islands in real-time.

Alongside the launch of Unreal Editor for Fortnite, Epic is also allowing players to try out a few games available in Fortnite to see what the software is capable of. This includes Deserted: Domination, Forest Guardian, and The Space Inside, all of which are features in the trailer below.

The release of Unreal Editor for Fortnite is also seeing the launch of creator Economy 2.0, using which Epic hopes to pay publishers eligible island, with payouts featuring 40% of the net revenue from Fortnite‘s item shop.

Unreal Editor for Fortnite is only available on PC, and Epic has stated that the software will grow to eventually feature more tools from Unreal Engine 5 in the future.