Two months into Lego Fortnite, Epic Games has announced a larger partnership.
Epic and Disney announced today that they will collaborate on an “all-new games and entertainment universe” that will bring Disney characters to life in Fortnite. The acquisition gives Disney a $1.5 billion ownership investment in Epic Games.
The project seems big. The firms called the initiative “an all-new games and entertainment universe” that lets gamers “play, watch, shop, and engage with” Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and other characters and stories. The cooperation will employ Epic’s Unreal Engine and be “interoperable” with Fortnite, integrating Epic’s social gaming infrastructure.
“This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said of the agreement, which reportedly stemmed from Epic’s 2017 Disney Accelerator program.
The Disney partnership is unexpected but suits Epic’s strategy. Fortnite, a battle royale game (officially a player-versus-environment game before that), has grown into a nexus of user-generated game types and brand partnerships.
In a release, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney stated Disney was one of the first corporations to believe in the possibilities of merging their worlds together with ours in Fortnite and employ Unreal Engine throughout their portfolio. “Now we’re collaborating on something entirely new to build a persistent, open, and interoperable ecosystem that will unite Disney and Fortnite.”
In December, Epic announced Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival, three standalone games in different genres than Fortnite, demonstrating its dedication to expanding Fortnite beyond its multiplayer shooter origins. Disney’s deep cooperation and huge investment will unlock Epic’s honed toolbox for developing online social worlds that many people may create and enjoy.
Epic’s successful Fortnite store, where players can purchase skins, dance movements, and emotes, provides a vital foundation for a limitless digital shopping mall with Disney-inspired items. Disney and Epic collaborate on Fortnite brand partnerships, and numerous Star Wars and Marvel characters are available as collectible skins. The firms co-produced Fortnite Nexus War in 2020.
The ambitious cooperation launched by Disney’s surprising investment has a release date of “soon(ish),” indicating gamers won’t have to wait years.
