Epic Games CEO: Apple Is The Obstacle In The Way Of Our Metaverse Vision

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney believes Apple is the only thing stopping the full potential of Epic’s metaverse vision.

During GDC 2023, Epic Games finally released their Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), which allows players to create their own games and experiences for free within Fortnite Creative mode. New details on Fab–a unified 3D marketplace–were also revealed, which will utilize 3D models, materials, MetaHumans, and more to “support all metaverse-inspired games…”

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz at GDC 2023, Sweeney spoke more on Epic’s metaverse plan for an open ecosystem across the games industry, explaining that the announcements are a milestone for Epic’s “unified” vision of the metaverse. The CEO said, “The games industry is the perfect place for an open system because there’s not one predominant company that can dictate terms.” Still, when asked if there are currently any obstacles standing in Epic’s way, Sweeney immediately said it was Apple.

“They’ll either try to crush the metaverse, or extract all the profit from it,” Sweeney said. “One or the other. Apple doesn’t let you use a competing browser engine. So they can do the same thing with the metaverse, so [they] can say, ‘you must use Apple’s limited metaverse engine, you can’t build your own, you can’t use Unreal.’ They could just amend all the platform’s rules tomorrow to kill everything everybody is doing, and that’s why we need really robust antitrust [laws]. And that’s why we’re fighting this so hard.

“We see them as utterly dominating this business if they’re allowed to use their market power and hardware to do so. So we’re fighting that. The other challenges I think can all be overcome.”