Surprise Epic Games' partnership with Unity promises more open game development

Unity vs Unreal Engine is the biggest contest among the best video game development software today. But Unity Technologies and Unreal developer Epic Games are putting some of their rivalry aside to promote what they see as an open, interoperable future for gaming.

Making a surprise appearance on stage at Unity’s Unite conference in Barcelona today, Epic Games’ CEO and founder Tim Sweeney joined Unity CEO Matt Bromberg on stage to to announce that Unity developers will be able to bring their games to Epic's Fortnite, while Unity’s commerce platform will come to Unreal Engine.

Fortnite is one of the world’s largest gaming ecosystems with more than 500 million registered accounts worldwide, while Unity remains the most popular single engine for game development. The ability for developers to bring Unity games to Fortnite and to participate in the new Fortnite Creator Economy is intended to create more opportunity and value for players and developers.

Providing more detail on X, Sweeney said Version 1 is a relatively low-level network protocol Unity build that enables a server running Unity to connect to devices running Unreal Engine, so the programming languages involved and the APIs won’t need to match up.

He says that since it all happens in Fortnite, no software is installed, there’s continuity of parties and voice chat, and no need for developers to develop the game across multiple platforms.

Meanwhile, Unity will bring Unreal Engine support to its cross-platform commerce platform, adding its cross-store payments SDK as mobile platforms open up to competing stores and payment methods.

This will give Unreal Engine developers more choice for managing digital catalogs, payment providers and web shops across PC, mobile, and web. Developers will be able to manage pricing, promotions and live operations with Unreal Engine, starting early in 2026.

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

More details about the partnership and product timing is expected early next year.

The initial reaction from developers on social media has been mostly positive, with many welcoming the decision to adopt an open and accessible approach. Some suggest it will make Unreal Engine even bigger – Unreal Engine 5 is Unity's biggest competitor and has already overtaken it in terms of sales – while others now say they'll stick with Unity instead of learning Unreal Engine 5.

“Amazing! This was the biggest issue keeping me from using UE for mobile games,” one dev writes on X. “I hope we get to see metahuman inside unity in the future. Both engines have a lot of services the other can benefit from,” another person writes.

However, some devs have reservations. “More monitoring as two engines coming together will break both ecosystems. As if both engines weren't hard enough to operate. I smell constant software crashing,” one person fears. Some have suggested that Fortnite is becoming another Roblox.

Let me know what you think in the comments section below. If you're getting started in Unreal, see our roundup of Unreal Engine tutorials.