Unity and Epic Announce Industry Shifting Partnership Allowing Unity Developers to Publish Games Inside Fortnite
Unity delivered one of the most unexpected announcements of the year during the Unite 2025 keynote in Barcelona, Spain. In a surprise moment, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney appeared on stage to unveil a new partnership between the two companies behind the most widely used third party game engines in the world.
According to Sweeney, early discussions with Unity president and CEO Matthew Bromberg centered on a shared mission to advance open digital platforms. Bromberg, who took over following the resignation of former CEO John Riccitiello during the runtime fee controversy, aligned with Epic on the need to break down restrictive platform rules across the industry.
The first tangible result of this collaboration is the integration of Unity’s new in app purchase software development kit into Unreal Engine, offering Unreal developers an additional cross platform purchase API option. Sweeney emphasized that this flexibility will become increasingly important as Google and Apple are now being compelled, in the wake of Epic’s legal battles, to open portions of their mobile ecosystems.
However, the most transformative announcement concerns Fortnite. With more than five hundred million registered accounts and one hundred million monthly active users last holiday season, Fortnite has gradually evolved from a standalone battle royale title into a creator driven ecosystem where forty percent of all playtime now goes to third party content.
Sweeney revealed that beginning next year, Unity developers will be able to publish fully fledged games inside Fortnite. Epic will achieve this through network technology developed by Unity that allows external engines to integrate into the Fortnite ecosystem via a specialized protocol.
Sweeney explained:
“Fortnite is a huge game that hit one hundred million monthly active users last holiday. Over time, it has evolved into an ecosystem where forty percent of playtime is going to third party content built by independent developers. They are earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year from participating in Fortnite, and now it is going to open up to all Unity games thanks to some really amazing network technology that Unity built that connects other engines into Unity through a networking protocol to make this work. So, starting next year, Unity developers will be able to publish games directly into Fortnite to appear in Fortnite’s discovery system alongside games built with Unreal Engine and to participate in the Fortnite economy as it evolves toward an open metaverse economy connecting all users and all engines.”
This move positions Fortnite as a foundational pillar of a broader cross engine metaverse economy, where both Unity and Unreal creations coexist within the same distribution and monetization ecosystem. For developers, this significantly expands reach and unlocks new monetization avenues inside one of the world’s largest active gaming communities.
In adjacent news, Fortnite recently introduced support for item sales within Islands, including randomized reward systems that closely resemble traditional lootbox mechanics.
What do you think about Unity games joining the Fortnite ecosystem? Does this mark the next major stage of the creator economy? Share your thoughts below.
