Core Games Joins Epic's Store -- But Not Necessarily Epic's Metaverse

Core, the ROBLOX-meets-Unreal "multiverse" funded in part by Epic is now, to no one's surprise, now available in Epic's store. Trailer above, announcement snip below:

By combining the power of Epic’s Unreal Engine with accessible tools that require no coding experience in a single platform, Core makes game creation, publishing and play available to everyone for free. Core also offers the most creator-friendly economy of any gaming UGC-platform with a 50% revenue share, allowing creators to make money and build businesses on Core. 

I got early word that this would happen right about when I was writing about Epic's new $100 million funding deal with Sony and other partners to build a metaverse, and assumed Core Games would be an integral part of that project. 

But not necessarily: When I asked Core CEO Frederic Descamps how does Core Games fit in with Epic's just-announced metaverse plans, he answered with this Delphic statement:

"There are different ways to build the Multiverse, which some call the Metaverse. Not one company will build the Multiverse or the Metaverse. The Metaverse is more top down where creators build within a given existing game and lore, within a sandbox of one universe and game. Meanwhile Core is a gaming user-generated content Multiverse: the Core Multiverse is more open and bottom up, where creators and players can decide what they want to build, play and how they want to connect all that together"

Which is similar to the distinction he's previously made between the multiverse and metaverse. What's notable here is that he's still making that distinction when I'm specifically asking him about it in relationship to the metaverse plans of a company that helps funds his own, whose UGC platform runs on that company's 3D engine, and is now available in that company's store.

So that's interesting! Maybe he sees the Core multiverse ultimately coming to swallow up Epic's metaverse -- or always existing alongside it.

Comments

[Kyz]

There isn't going to be a metaverse or multiverse in the sense that fiction foretold. That global environment we think of as the metaverse already happened. It's called the internet. Within it are worlds and nearly endless content.

But one global 3D platform? Not happening. If it was going to happen it would have already. The market doesn't want it any more than it wanted VR on a global scale.

I think this thing with Core is just wordplay. They're close to Epic because they're built on Epic tech, but other than that, they're basically a dumbed down way to create games. If you want better games, you'll use the Unreal Engine itself.

Personally I find Core far too limiting compared to using the Unreal Engine directly and I don't see them overcoming the big problems like delivering the customers and buying power. The more customers, the more games and the more people trying to grab enough foot traffic to make a small bit of money before it becomes so saturated no one is making anything.

At any rate, it's still a good time to be a creator and you go wherever your skill level and determination gravitates you to. But if any entities are the metaverse tools? It's the game engines, few people are writing all this from scratch these days like SL did.