Epic Games announces sweeping cross-platform collab' bringing Unity's games and commerce platform to Fortnite

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Frienemies forever?

The best landing spots in Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 4.
(Image credit: Epic Games)

Oil and water, cats and dogs, Epic and Unity. Some things just don't go together. Until now, that is. Epic Games has announced plans to team up with probably its greatest rival in game development, Unity, to bring games made using the Unity engine to Fortnite. Epic also says, "Unity’s enhanced commerce platform" will come to Unreal Engine.

What's more, the collaboration will see Unity bring Unreal Engine support to its platform. To quote the killer excerpt from Epic's announcement:

"Developers will have the ability to publish Unity games into Fortnite, one of the world’s largest gaming ecosystems with more than 500 million registered accounts worldwide, and participate in the Fortnite Creator Economy. Also announced today at Unite, Unity’s Annual Developer Conference, Unity will be bringing Unreal Engine support to their cross-platform commerce platform."

If you're wondering what led these former mortal enemies to get together in such a sweeping collab', over to Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Epic Games. “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,” he said.

Matt Bromberg, President and CEO, Unity, echoed that, commenting, “Choice and open systems create growth for everyone in the gaming ecosystem.” Of course, for Epic, this is presumably all about its ongoing quest to transform Fortnite from a mere smash-hit battle royale into a broad, sprawling and even more profitable gaming ecosystem. As they say in the UK's satirical tome, Private Eye, trebles all round!

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Five weapons shown against an explosion background: a shotgun, a minigun, an assault rifle, a pistol and a rocket launcher
Presumably, there will soon be all kinds of exciting new ways to spend money in Fortnite.(Image credit: Epic Games)

Explaining Epic's rationale, Sweeney also told The Verge about his vision for a decentralised Fortnite that's more akin to the open web. “Fortnite’s still this big thing operated by Epic completely,” he said, “but there will be a day when you can, from the program that’s currently called Fortnite, go to other sites that are completely controlled by other companies.

"We have nothing to do with them. We make no revenue from them. We don’t have commercial agreements with them. They’re just like websites on the web.”

In that context, Unity's role here is to be a test candidate for that more open future. For now, Epic will ensure that content inserted into Fortnite is reviewed and "ratings compliant." But, eventually, the plan is for a fully open platform.

"We’d only have reviews for stuff that we host, and anybody would be able to put anything anywhere, and people would be able to browse to it like you do in a web browser today,” Sweeney said.

As for timing, the announcement says that "Developers will be able to manage pricing, promotions, and live operations with Unreal Engine, coming early next year," while additional details about the partnership and product timing will also be shared early in 2026.

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Jeremy Laird
Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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