‘Fortnite’ Maker Teams Up With Crypto’s Steam Competitor to Boost Game Development

A gaming platform built on crypto is teaming up with the creator of “Fortnite.”

As revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, game developers using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine will receive better business terms if they deploy their titles on The Abyss. The Abyss, a Steam competitor funded by an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018, rewards game devs for purchases made on the platform.

Mike Gamble, head of games licensing for Epic Games, said in a statement:

“We’re delighted that The Abyss has chosen to provide additional resources to Unreal Engine developers and publishers on its platform. Unreal Engine 4 scales to hundreds of millions of players, and access to premier support and connections with the global community can be critical to success of large-scale games with live operations.”

The precise details of the arrangement are unclear, with both firms citing non-disclosure agreements.

Nevertheless, The Abyss founder Konstantin Boyko-Romanovsky told CoinDesk in an email that conditions between Epic Games and developers will be “better than standard ones and will not be confined to the premium support.”

Additionally, developers using Unreal will not need to sign a separate agreement with Epic Games. “All transactions are done through The Abyss,” he wrote.

Epic offers fairly generous licensing terms to developers using the Unreal Engine. It only requires developers to make a quarterly payment of 5 percent of returns over $3,000, according to its end-user licensing agreement. Developers can also negotiate an upfront price if that’s preferable.

The Unreal Engine is a game development platform that first launched in 1998. It has been used to build instances of the “Mass Effect,” “Batman” and “Medal of Honor” franchises, according to Wikipedia.

As part of the new partnership, developers on The Abyss will get access to the Unreal Developers Network. They will also get marketing services from The Abyss.

The Abyss ran an ICO in early 2018 using a model devised by Vitalik Buterin in which token holders could vote on whether the development team should get more funds as the project progressed. The Abyss raised slightly over $15 million, according to Boyko-Romanovsky.

The Abyss launched in March 2019, serving players of massively multiplayer online games. Developers using The Abyss earn income from referrals they make to the platform, even if the people who follow those referrals don’t end up purchasing the developer’s game.

“We’re delighted to welcome new Unreal Engine benefits to our platform,” Boyko-Romanovsky said in a statement.

Six games are currently live on The Abyss, compared to 30,000 on Steam.

Fortnite esports tournament image via Shutterstock