Remarkably, you'll soon be able to play Unity games in Fortnite as Epic joins forces with its long-time rival

Epic Games and Unity have just announced a surprising new partnership that's big news for game developers and Fortnite users. Despite it being one of the biggest rivals to Epic's Unreal Engine, games built in Unity will soon be publishable and playable directly in Fortnite - the latest step in its mission to grow as a metaverse platform, alongside simply being one of the biggest and best battle royale games around.

Information is fairly surface-level at the moment, but during Unity's Unite 2025 conference in Barcelona, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney unexpectedly graced the stage to announce this new partnership. While "additional details about this partnership and product timing will be shared next year," according to an Epic blog post, Sweeney reveals that thanks to "some really amazing network technology" Unity engine games will soon be able to be played within Fortnite itself.

In a response to a fan on X, who questions whether this is just the "Epic Games launcher with extra steps," Sweeney says that that's not the case. "Way less steps: 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 as is necessary with standalone games," he explains.

As for why Epic would want to open the Fortnite platform up to games built in a rival engine to Unreal, it's part of its push to be the biggest and most open metaverse platform in gaming, jostling with the likes of Roblox for that crown. According to Sweeney, Fortnite hit 100 million monthly active users during the holidays last year, but tells the crowd at Unite 2025 that "40% of playtime is going to third-party content, built by independent developers like yourselves." While Epic will of course still want more and more people to play the Fortnite content it creates, it seems it wants that percentage to increase.

It's unclear at the moment whether past games built in Unity will be able to be seamlessly plugged into Fortnite. For example, could Team Cherry whack Hollow Knight and Silksong into Fortnite with just a few clicks? Or would the age or complexity of an existing game cause issues and require significant work from its developers? Regardless, it's certainly going to be possible for those releasing brand new, Unity-built games in the future.

Acknowledging Epic's own irony in an interview with The Verge, Sweeney also recognizes that "publishing Unity games into Fortnite will happen before publishing standalone Unreal Engine games into Fortnite." But this partnership with Unity does have some more benefits for Epic, aside from hopefully growing the Fortnite platform.

Unreal Engine developers will now have access to Unity's cross-platform commerce system, which "will give Unreal developers more choice for managing everything from their digital catalogs and payment providers to web shops across PC, mobile, and web." Unity and Epic say that this will arrive "early next year." However, no timeframe has been given yet as to when we'll see Unity titles integrated into Fortnite.