Inside Epic's Plan to Stop Roblox
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
After wanting to check out Epic Games' Unreal Fest for the past couple of years, I finally attended this year's installment in Chicago. It gave me a chance to learn more about the Fortnite ecosystem and the creators building games using Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). My first stop in the Windy City was attending GamesBeat Engage, where I took the Roblox side in a Roblox vs. Fortnite debate, learning a ton from my opponent Tom Jank in the process.
The next standout moment came during the "State of Unreal" keynote presentation, where Epic CEO Tim Sweeney took the stage and named Roblox as the major threat the rest of the gaming industry needs to band together to beat. I didn't expect to hear Roblox get called out as the industry's villain, but that's precisely what happened.
Tim Sweeney's Two Visions of the Future
Sweeney highlighted several major trends that are shaping the gaming ecosystem today:
a new generation playing more than any before it
gaming becoming increasingly social
the economy shifting from buying games to buying things inside games
Each of those trends creates advantages for big games and big platforms. Your friends are likely already in those popular places, and a new entrant has to overcome the fear that the game, and whatever you bought in it, won't be around next year. On top of that, attention is harder to win than ever, with YouTube and TikTok pulling on the same limited hours in the day. So the industry is shifting considerably.
Sweeney then laid out two futures.
The first is the doom scenario: Roblox grows and eats gaming. He described a centralized platform with a single keeper that commoditizes all content, takes more than 70% of revenue, and has 450 million users on board. He named Roblox specifically, not as an aside, but as the outcome to avoid.
Epic is casting Roblox as the villain precisely because Roblox is winning. His remarks reminded me of Matthew Ball's most recent State of Video Gaming report, which paints Roblox as the one big growth story in an otherwise stalled ecosystem. Ball's data shows Roblox captured the majority of all consumer-spending growth outside China in recent years, and the single largest share in the most recent year. Outside of China, Roblox is essentially the growth story in Western gaming. So Sweeney isn't being paranoid. The numbers suggest it's already underway.
And the Roblox critique lands on its own terms. In a world where Roblox keeps growing, the biggest winner is Roblox. Some top developers will do very well. But the average developer won't see significant financial gains, which is already true on UGC video platforms like YouTube. Sweeney's case against the single platform winner model makes sense because the economics behind it are real.
The second future Sweeney called out is the one he believes in: high-quality games rising and linking up together. Better games, made more efficiently, connected socially, part of a global ecosystem. Developers collaborating to compete against YouTube and TikTok for attention, building this with partners like Disney and LEGO and with Epic's Unreal Engine 6 in mind. Epic can't bring this vision to life alone, even with Fortnite's 80 million monthly users, so the call to action was to form up into what he called "Team Open" and define the future of gaming together.
Sweeney never said the word "metaverse." But that's what he was describing. Content, communities, and economies that travel across games. An interoperable world that no single company owns.
Team Open: How Long Will it Take, Do Players Want It?
As a strategic move, Team Open makes sense. If the threat is one platform consolidating the industry, organizing everyone else into an open, interoperable bloc is a coherent answer. And I don't doubt Sweeney's sincerity. His company has clearly been building toward this for years.
But two things make me doubt this vision.
The first is time. This is an idealistic vision with enormous technical challenges, and the blockers look incredibly daunting. Plus by the time it's built and adopted, what will the landscape even look like in two to three years? Things move so fast today (especially with AI) that new forces we haven't considered yet could reshape the board before Team Open ships.
The second concern is demand. Where's the proof players actually want this? Players have been fragmented across games and platforms for as long as I can remember, and it's not obvious that bothers them. My nine-year-old plays MLB The Show, Tour de France, and EA FC on Xbox. Would connecting those games make his experience so much better that he'd play less Roblox? I don't think so.
The strongest evidence to point to for player demand in Team Open is Roblox itself. But look at what Roblox actually proves. Players didn't choose a hundred games wired together across platforms. They chose one platform where everything already lives. That's not demand for open interoperability. It's demand for one place, which is the opposite of what Team Open is selling and the exact thing Sweeney is warning against. Maybe players don't want "open." Maybe they just want "one place," and Roblox already gave them that.
Two Takeaways about Fortnite Creators
1. Fortnite is telling creators exactly what Roblox tells creators. I sat in on several panels for UEFN developers, and the advice was the same I've watched Roblox give. Make a fun game that brings players back and that they want to play with friends. Retention and social play. That's the secret to success on both platforms. Fortnite is just earlier and less mature as a platform. The tools are less battle-tested and the developer community is smaller.
But the money to made in Fortnite is already real. In one panel I heard a top creator is making $10 million a year building in UEFN, rivaling what some of the top Roblox developers earn. Epic has paid out more than $1 billion to creators since UEFN launched three years ago. Whatever the maturity gap, the opportunity for creators to find real financial success is clearly there.
2. UEFN developers are well-positioned for Unreal Engine 6. UE6 is going to absorb a lot of what UEFN already does, and the specific tools this community has spent years mastering are about to move from a sideshow within the Unreal world to the center of where the powerful game engine is headed. If you want to be ready for UE6, the skills being built on Fortnite today are about to become core. That creates an interesting opportunity for UEFN developers.
Final Thoughts
Within UGC gaming, Roblox is still the leader on scale, culture, and monetization. That's the case I made on stage at GamesBeat Enage, and I believe it. But Unreal Fest reframed the question. This isn't a Roblox-versus-Fortnite story anymore. It's Roblox versus everyone else, with Sweeney trying to organize that "everyone else" into a single bloc.
Team Open is a credible answer, but it's a slow build against a fast clock, aimed at a connected future that Roblox's own success suggests players may not be asking for.
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Stephen Dypiangco is one the world’s leading experts on the topic of Roblox and brands. He has advised global companies on their Roblox strategies, including BBC Studios, Paramount, and Takara Tomy.
With 120+ articles published about Roblox and a following of over 14,000 across LinkedIn and his industry leading Max Power Gaming newsletter, he is widely regarded by gaming industry executives and investors as a trusted resource.
Stephen is building the premiere network of Roblox professionals to help this emerging sector connect and scale through his unique blend of relevant content and community events.
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