Fortnite’s Unreal Engine editor lets it compete with Roblox

Epic Games has unveiled a new set of tools for giving Fortnite content creators even more power. The new tools are called the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN)and they aim to bring in some of the power of the full Unreal Engine 5 Fortnitemaking them slightly more accessible, while also allowing entirely new creations and games to be developed in them Fortnite. The UEFN tools were announced and debuted during Epic’s “State of Unreal” presentation at the Game Developers Conference 2023.

Unreal editor for Fortnite is for experienced game developers, but it is also designed as an easy-to-use tool for Fortnite‘s many island makers and hobbyists. Ultimately, the goal is to have all the features of Unreal Engine 5 available in UEFN. This includes assets and ultimately Meta Humans. UEFN also works on any platform that can play Fortniteallowing creators to collaborate with each other on consoles and PC.

The editor itself is specifically designed to import all kinds of content and assets from the Unreal engine, as well as provide players with many base game systems to work on top of. During the GDC presentation, Epic showed off footage of some of the projects built with UEFN, including one that featured a full movie before transitioning smoothly to third-person shooter gameplay in an environment that was nothing like Fortnite – except for the characters and the shooting.

The tool offers landscape editing capabilities similar to the ones Epic developers use to create Fortnite Cards. Creators can also instantly switch to an in-game mode to play their creations right away. Epic even includes a custom programming language called Verse, which allows creators to fine-tune parts of their new game using Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

During the GDC presentation, Epic also revealed that Island Creators’ current harvest helps generate a significant amount of revenue for Fortniteas players engaged in Custom Islands are more likely to spend money Fortnite‘s in-game store.

Image: Epic Games

To reflect this fact, and the fact that UEFN allows many more kinds of creations within FortniteEpic is going to share 40% Fortnite revenue to creators who create content for the game, with larger shares for those creators whose work sparks the interest and engagement of more players. This new revenue sharing model goes into effect today and extends back to early March for eligible creators. Epic hopes this will spur creators to work across UEFN and eventually entire studios to make games within that ecosystem.

UEFN is available in Fortnite now, with more features on the way.