Epic Games doesn’t just work Fortnite, Rocket Leagueand a PC gaming showcase. He’s also the keeper of Unreal Engine, a set of tools that powers everything from THE Witcher 4 see you next time Halo. CEO Tim Sweeney spent his time on stage for Unreal Festival 2026 this week in Chicago, I launch Unreal Engine 6 as an alternative to a gaming ecosystem dominated by closed platforms like Roblox.
Sweeney said traditional AAA games face a “time of crisis and opportunity” as old ways of doing things fail. “We often see hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs followed by tens of millions of dollars in revenue,” he said. “Development costs continue to rise. Many feel like a tidal wave is sweeping through the AAA games industry.”
Despite laying off 1,000 of its employees earlier this yearsaid Sweeney Fortnite is thriving again and games like this are well-positioned to dominate a market where new players place a high value on socializing together. “The other big change is that the economy is moving from buying games to things in games,” he added. “Whether you’re a fan or not, there’s no denying it.” The latest threat to conventional gaming models, according to the executive, is the increasingly competitive war for attention. Roblox is winning this war. Sweeney believes other game makers need to adopt Unreal Engine to survive this onslaught.
“There are two big predictions for the future as these issues reverberate throughout the industry,” Sweeney said on stage. “One vision of the future is that Roblox is growing and eating games. A lot of people are saying that online. You know, what you have there is a centralized platform with a game gatekeeper that takes over 70 percent of the revenue and has 450 million users on board. So it’s a real challenge for game developers.”
He continued:
But we believe in a very different future. A much brighter image for those in the room. It’s a future of high-quality gaming, one that rises to the challenge and connects our content, connects our communities, and connects our economies to deliver fun and bring players great games in a way we’ve never done before. To achieve this, we all need to change the way we build games. Build better games, more efficiently, and build connected games, where all players are connected and economies are connected, so that players, instead of seeing them as isolated products, see them as part of a global ecosystem in which all game developers participate together.
You know, we want to work with all of you and all the game developers to achieve this together. Unreal Engine 6 is our technological foundation, and we believe this is a great challenge that we all must overcome. We have to win the competition for the players. I’m not only against other games, but also against YouTube, TikTok and everything people do online. This was a big concern for us when we started building Unreal Engine 6.
Sweeney spoke of a version of this global ecosystem for a few years now. Previously, it was more closely tied to a vision of an interoperable metaverse. Here, the Epic co-founder presents a more subtle vision of collaboration and cooperation between large companies that rely on Unreal Engine to create their games. Unfortunately, this new framework is also married to a influx of new generative AI integrations in the next version of Unreal Engine. Some notable developers are already re-evaluating collaborations with Epic on the inclusion of controversial technology.
Is there an alternative to Roblox where one company still controls the tools that top game developers can use? Maybe not. Although Epic has on its side much more generous revenue sharing terms and antitrust legal battles that continue to puncture monopolies in the mobile gaming landscape. “We have the opportunity to form Team Open and once again define the future of gaming together,” Sweeney said today. We’ll see who ends up joining him.