Why legendary developers are jumping onto Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN)!

hey everyone epic recently announced uefn unreal editor for fortnite and this service is currently in public beta and based on FX crater economy 2.0 program Developers for uefn will share 40 of fortnite Revenue with fortnite creators based on player interest and engagement along with announcement other initiatives such as the first programming language ufn's analog to roadblocks using Lua and a unified digital assort asset store called Fab was also launched today we talked about the current market environment as a developer for UF uefn what is the bull case and why should developers get excited about uefn so joining us today to speak on this topic we have first Pete Holly Chief product officer at 100 thieves who recently launched a game project called bank heist using uefn next we have Alex European founder of Bungie and Industrial toys acquired by EA Alex just founded a new startup look face North building these experiences for uefn and

finally we have Arthur chusoff a former hit Roblox developer who is now seeking opportunities outside of Roblox and I thought it'd be it's great to have Arthur here to basically compare and contrast the Roblox development environment to uefn welcome everyone thanks Joseph hey Joseph thanks for having us all right so guys I thought we'd just go ahead and Dive Right In with the big question why today's episode is sponsored by data.ai to access estimates rankings downloads Revenue usage or engagement for millions of apps on the App Store and Google Play sign up for data.ai so you guys are you know um Alex you in particular legend in the games industry you've worked on some of the biggest games including Halo and so you know is this how big is this

opportunity and what about the Epic Creator economy and uafn got someone like you interested in building experiences for fortnite and starting a company specifically focused on uefn sure sure and um I would say in my mind it was fairly simple um and and first before I answered the question the companies look North World okay yeah all good um but um you know at the beginning of this year I had a group of folks from the studio from industrial toys and we got together after we left EA to start working on a new game and it was right around the GDC time frame uh where epic announced what they were doing and having a meeting with epic uh sort of opened my eyes to not what was happening in the moment but what their long-term strategy is with fortnite and the platform and it wasn't instant but it was pretty quick that it

it became obvious to me that there are trying to build this into a platform a platform with a lot of things uh in common with like the App Store when when it launched with games for Facebook when it launched but with a couple of extra things that are um that we've never seen before one 250 million uh active players a month um at the very beginning two it's got the Unreal Engine built in which is the best AAA you know game engine ever and I've been using it for 20 years and three it's got like five years worth of content in there already to to build with so when you put all that together you think to yourself hey are they going to be successful in turning fortnite into a platform I don't know the answer to that question you know we'll we'll find out um but I want to be there if they are successful and that's why we started the

company we originally we started making the game because hey this is a place where we could we just came off like a four-year project that didn't ship this could be a place where we could do a four-week project that will ship uh and then it turned into oh my gosh if this really does turn into a platform this is super interesting uh we could be there in Day Zero let's go that's that was what was in my head and I think sky's the limit you know it's like you know I put I put in my my my my little thesis you know the word metaverse and everybody laughed at me you can't say the word metaverse it's so overused but if you look if you saw a Ready Player one like it looks like fortnite you know it's like did anybody make the metaverse maybe epic already did I don't know okay great and Pete what about you I obviously 100 thieves best known for Esports and is his lifestyle brand if you talk about bank heist what were the considerations why uefn and maybe a little bit of the origin story behind how this thing came about

for you guys yeah I think uh very similar to Alex actually in a number of ways just the realization of what was possible very quickly when we went to GDC that was one second was you know I've been doing this closed on 30 years and worked on AAA console PC and Michael except big hits and some failures and games and ship and the usual roller coaster all of these are already embarked on well they hired me to build a triple a first person shooter which we announced last year but we have a number of Theses uniquely around 100 thieves which is around our creator Network which you know we have a reach of around 160 million players in our community through our various creators and YouTube Choice channels so we had a thesis about not needing a hundred million dollars to Market our game because we have this unique contact with our community and there's super interesting ways to they're very authentic and tell a great story and and tell a story about game

development and release it in a very different way so without repeating what Alex said the the opportunity for us to to test that thesis in six weeks which is a deadline we obviously created for ourselves in a unique time box was to get to that thesis faster than maybe you know waiting two years for our game to get to a point I wish we could do that we had this thesis around reach and being able to create a flywheel of Interest very early which could then extend out into you know our community watching our creators like nature and Valkyrie and Jack play and and that was really important to us with bank cards associated about testing that thesis because GDC was amazing for two reasons one obviously over the last few years money has been largely free and you know people have raised like 70 million and hired 100 people to get after one idea and the whole thing's starting to feel a little bit risky to me just as the community's got so many incredible tools at this point you can

see it in Roblox um and so I just felt a little weird to just get after one idea with all those people and then have to spend the money on marketers this is what I've found a very unique opportunity my second favorite moment was I got to know the front lines guys who you know made the the Call of Duty uh start game on Roblox and I loved it because I arranged to meet them at the Roblox mixer but they couldn't get in because they weren't 21. that was just such a unique GBC moment for me and yeah I just came away inspired by that army of creativity and community and got to bank house very quickly which was and I'm sure Alex would agree I have never in my career gone from idea to sandbox to prototype to iterative product to release in six weeks same same we were thrilled obviously with the outcome two million unique players went top 25 and um still trying to figure out the Black Box algorithms that helped that happen but um yeah I think it's an interesting

phenomenon when you've got you know such experienced veteran guys like you guys who are going into this kind of a platform and not working on like these huge big projects but able to launch things very quickly and kind of like join the ranks of guys like Arthur who has been living in this world of you know very quick development with a lot of the infrastructure that's taken care of for you and things like that and so Arthur for you you were a Roblox developer I think you've kind of left the platform you've also investigated uefn and could you for our audience talk to us about you know maybe some of the reasons that you left Roblox and then if you were to compare and contrast Roblox to uefn how would you characterize that um it's gonna be a bit ironic on why I left Roblox and really it's because of the technical limitations that were like Rolex has in place at the moment um like it still has technology behind on texture mapping all that good stuff we only just recently got meshes and

while all these new updates were fantastic is like years behind any other platform so that's why memory friends are like let's just go make a game off of Rolex and you know make it somewhere for steam because it's just a bit more technical allowing another reason is that the Roblox Market has got oversaturated and uh I feel like everything has been done so far because I've been on for almost I would say 15 years over almost um as a kid which is a wild thing about like oh this childhood platform is now maybe a mortgage holder so that's pretty cool it's it's a it's a really wild concept but uh the technical limitations did you know encourage me to move off and find somewhere else where I can expand on my creativity ideas and alongside the maturity content rather make more mature stories and engaging content that way although Roblox is now working on allowing

um 17 plus experiences games on the platform which is a really interesting take they're doing a lot of updates focused on that but comparing it to Unreal editor um I I say it's ironic that I left Roblox for the technical limitations when um while unreal editor has You Know Better Sound fidelity um Graphics are vastly improved and whatnot um you still had some bass release issues with the unreal editors such as you know limitations on the engine of how much you can put down now I know recently they have allowed World partitions so that's correct um content streaming which Roblox had from the get-go but um really despite all these beautifications of the unreal editor Rolex still has the accessibility of content on a real you gotta verify your documents you gotta get a uh Creator code let me see if I have it in my notes yeah very Island Creator Cola good stuff

and um and initially that memory and the game engine Roblox does not have that you just jump on Roblox you publish a game and there you go there's no red tape at all which is the beautiful part of Roblox that's the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to comparing unreal Editor to Roblox it's just a complete accessibility but once you're in with unreal you would have more freedom but accessibility means a lot especially for the target audience of young gang developers like I was myself right and Arthur if if I'm correct I believe that the initial release of ufn you actually couldn't do things like Save State so it's not like Roblox you still can't you still can't save your views okay yeah so it's not I mean it's funny it's funny Arthur you're talking about like you know heading off Roblox because of the the limitations I think where uefn is right now it's it is super duper basic right I mean it's like you can mod it FPS right now

um I think we all believe I don't know I believe I'm bought in that there's a road map and they're going to fulfill it over time you know grain assault on their dates but yeah you still can't save a game yeah that's uh that's that's the main issue but mainly coming in as a Rolex developer my focus is the accessibility you know this island verification all these memory limits all these documents you need to earn money on Roblox you just make an account make a couple games to see what sticks and there you go you made some money now you can go buy a Tesla like any other developer and I've got seven said APR because you're like 18 years old um um but I mean like I'm not like making games on unreal I'm using the go dot engine go that is that how people say it yeah some people say I heard someone say Yoda okay so you're you're actually it's interesting because you as the young guy who was on Roblox for many years leaving the Creator platforms and then you've got these very experienced veteran guys

who are jumping into greater platforms but I think that's and obviously there's some limitations to Unreal now but I it seems like like Alex and Pete you guys are betting on the promise of of where ufn can go and when we look at like some of the economics that have been published by unreal um I think uh yeah I'm looking at this graphic now but um you know it showed like five creators making over 10 million 13 making over 3 million and 43 making over 1 million and for you guys when you think about the potential Economic Opportunity you know are you guys thinking in these current terms you guys think it's gonna just expand dramatically how would you guys characterize what the potential economics would be for for for you guys or for you know even or for less professional folks who might just be individuals like like Arthur

yeah it's um it's difficult because the the ways in which the algorithm judges engagement time spent and how that relates to payouts is unknown and I also believe from others in the community that that's also shifted in a positive sense so from April May I believe epic will be moving more money to Creator Islands because they wanted it to feel more positive and people ask the question like obviously Arthur was joking earlier about LinkedIn which is my interpretation of Internet hell but but people just slam you on LinkedIn for how much money are you making but how is Bank hours you guys were top 25 and it's like non-stop so the level of interest in the uefn's high I'm certainly not going to share that with people who bombard me on LinkedIn but it's kind of interesting that it seems to be shifting and Alex said it earlier

it honestly feels like when I launched a free-to-play game in 2011 on you know IOS and Android it's uh it's a real gold rush it's um an opportunity but it's it's full of Thieves lots of skullduggery going on theft of ideas but there is there is a first mover Advantage there because you you know there are games that released in 2011 around that time that are still stuck in the charts on iPhone and Android so there's a great opportunity but coming back to the earlier question it's very hard to judge what you know Alex and I may have been through or other companies like an EA or otherwise where you're asked for a true return on investment and I wonder if that's why a lot of bigger companies haven't jumped in because you literally can't do a BNL on this stuff right you can't yeah there's no comp to be had here and it and for me Pete this is why I'm so excited about this platform is like I I could do whatever the f I want

um within the constraints right so it's really clean sheet I ideas win the day but on the on the economics less less concerned or interested uh interested about how the economics play out in the in the first 12 months but really thinking about this longer term when sort of the the random entropy of of wild west kind of settles down the engine opens up and features and I think I my sense is and I who knows but my sense is this platform is going to mature differently than other UDC platforms have matured because the underlying based technology is going to open up I think pretty rapidly like if you look at what ufn is capable of right now it's very much a subset of the Unreal Engine and as more and more tool like you can't you can't even instrument your own Telemetry right now you know so things that we know exist in the tech stack but just have not they haven't figured out how they want this platform

to take shape yet as those tools as more of the pipeline as more of the feature set becomes unlocked I think you'll see Richard deep deeper more interesting more experimental I I my my sense is the next big thing you know how like League of Legends came out of DOTA came out of Warcraft you know Counter-Strike came out of uh you know Half-Life you know all like Pub G came out of Arma like I think you're gonna see a big freaking giant play come out of out of this ecosystem because it supports so much creativity it supports so much you don't have to have a comp you can build some something in six weeks ideas can win the day and there's a there you say you talked about the flywheel Pete it's like that the flywheel is so much more efficient here right now um and I I think that's gonna you know dare I say the I word Innovation it's gonna pop out on the other side yeah I agree because especially in communities

right there's no way just because I've been doing this a long time I don't get to tell people like Arthur what to do like how our in a very old school way our team is made up of half our team are people who've come from the communities of Roblox and CS go like that and they do phenomenal work and all you have to do is describe a creative situation and lead them to it that's very different from a traditional console studio so I think it's a real cultural opportunity too because whilst we're building our Triple A game we also have a team on uefn and we're bringing in fresh new Talent on uefn and running it quite based on great ideas and speed and completion urgency as we call it without Crunch and in the meantime we're building this more traditional studio and I really want to build like a flow of speed and ideas and also the talent can move between those two pools I've got folks on the AAA game who've joined us from take two and Electronic Arts and blizzard and these guys are phenomenal and they're helping do all the lighting

and all the texture work for the the team over here that's working real fast and I'm working on that culture because strategically I think the Long play here certainly for us on why we're putting our time and money is at some point in the future unreal editor will sit on top of Unreal Engine 6 and the community and the developers will just be working on one giant thing together we're building a studio to take advantage of that opportunity if that if that turns out to be true otherwise I'll take the different path but like that that's that's what it feels like to us and that's how we're constructing our culture and our team and our speed it's just a really unique culture that I I see and I I would say Rolex falls under game industry now is that you have these big giant companies as Joseph mentioned earlier and the people they can saw on the platform are like 17 year old developers it's pretty just surreal to me and these developers are making gold rush money here and I think much much like Alex says you know unreal is

going to be in this Gold Rush stage but I feel like it's a bit more saturated compared to rolex's earlier days because Roblox paved a way to show what UEC can do for a community built by a community so it is is 100 a different culture it's a different pipeline of how you normally have a business or a company focus on making video games it just it's really impressive that's all I gotta say and Pete I wanted to touch upon you know something that Alex mentioned but you've you've got these guys building for uafm but you also have that AAA studio and one of the points Alex made is that uefn as a Creator platform is a little bit of like an innovation or incubation lab and so from your perspective are you thinking about stuff that potentially gains traction on the UF inside that would then feed the AAA studio is that is that how you're thinking yeah the bank has Acorn was and this is nothing new like there's no crazy like

innovationship but it's we have a thesis in Project X which we've been prototype where four teams fight over extremely valuable objectives and then they have to steal those from the other team and leave with them now I'm not talking about extraction gameplay because God knows we don't want to be another Studio making one of those but it's more is it interesting for two teams to fight over extremely valuable things and then leave with it and we've learned a lot from our community about something as simple as bank cards there's only so much you can do in six weeks but yeah absolutely and we have three more games in development for uefn so very very simple touching on ideas that we're thinking about because ultimately we want Project X to be a place to test new ideas anyway and we're designing the foundations of technology to allow for that because this is the first time in my career in terms of the financing we have for Project X where I didn't sit and Pitch one idea right so it's been it's been really

interesting and to come back to what Alex said earlier that the cultural challenge is really we were your first few days on uefn or being a traditional game developer saying hey so what about persistence no what could we change no what about no do we no so what you have to do is like not get angry about what uefn is today and actually celebrate what it is and because in the end I remember I was checking my name shot like Matt and he's like are you into this and I was like are you into fortnite because it's going to be like character camera control the things that we can't change and why would you because it's 200 million plus people playing that's the magical thing that you can't adjust today at least so celebrate what fournette is jump into that giant Lego box of five years of of amazing things then use verse to construct it but it is still Fortnight so even when you're trying to build round-based team tactics gameplay round one is like it's almost like fortnite saying what are you guys doing

here like so round one never works properly if the game only works properly from round two three four five because round one is a show of fortnite trying to figure out what the hell's going on that's the metaphor but it's it's wild we have to celebrate that craziness as opposed to get getting frustrated yeah you have to kind of like check your perfectionist AAA game developer credentials at the door and just Embrace being a modder you know it's like it's like you got you you gotta hack the you know you gotta hack it that's the word like you know I can't I can't even tell you the the difficulty oh I mean what I do drill comes up drills The Vault tons of spot door blows open like escape with the money it took forever in in any other game engine unreal any other game we would have had that done in half a day it was ridiculous like the amount of verse hacking we have to do to do something that simple was me and then try to move a payload down the street good Lord I I

haven't I haven't spent that much time on something so simple for a long time and maybe just to close the loop on the economics Arthur I wanted to ask you so I mentioned some of the numbers that are being made by ufn creators now relative to Roblox could you speak a little bit in terms of like how does that compare and is that enough to be able to draw out some of the Roblox guys to think about developing for uefn how do you view the the current economics um it's really cool that I believe it's five people that currently make 10 million dollars on you uh unreal it's it's really cool that the potential is already there I'm not sure if it's gonna be a long-term profit much like Roblox has been but the numbers are still smaller in terms of population size computer Roblox uh I mean I believe adopt me that game on Roblox makes over 70

million uh alone and that's just one of the top earning games so now imagine the waterfall of what the next stop earning game makes what's the next top ring game and you got hundreds of thousands of these games on the front page so you have a lot more of a huge sample size compared unreal editor um but it still shows unreal editor has a really good potential because it's still got a small develop developer base am I correct yes it's pretty small it's hard to judge though because it's so fast to get to ideas as it is on Roblox but it's so fast it's hard to judge the number of developers just because of the the amount of new content that's released and a lot of it's copycatting each other right and it's very tempting to just go after red versus blue and go after you know other game Concepts but I I think avoiding IP infringement and stealing other people's ideas is probably a good

long-term idea to avoid that and focus on where the platform will be because coming back to what I iPhone and Android were early on in that ecosystem it was it was a pretty dirty game of driving for installs to hit Discovery to to hit your downloads to get to revenue and then you know if you were to Apple God bless those people just getting slammed and hammered for featuring it was a real gold rush and and very frustrating to watch and you had to play all kinds of dirty tricks and some people really were but those those companies that settled in based on great game ideas great gameplay and high quality and like supercell for example just sort of came out of that Gold Rush Mist with really sustainable awesome long-term gameplay and IP and I hope that this would go the same way absolutely and to you know simply answer your question Joseph um you know you have unreal's profit chart the minimum amount is like a hundred bucks per year at one of the

Rolex developer conferences a couple years ago they had a similar chart to Showcase hearings of all developers and the minimum amount for the biggest population was 50 000 a year so that should probably show you a good scale of how much more is being made on Roblox with a way bigger population but unreal sells a lot of potential a lot got it and we've kind of currently talked a bit about some of the limitations of ufn currently and obviously it's going to get better but like if you guys better if you guys could talk about what what in in terms of just the development platform itself in it like what are some of the good parts of ufn or developing on uefn and maybe Arthur if if you've taken a look at it it'd be good to also hear you know relative to Roblox is there anything that ufn does better for example it's got more technology and it's got the ability for a lot of cross play now Roblox can be instantaneously play on any mobile device but I believe ufn you can make uh you can trade for the uh

Playstation and Quest and the switch and that's pretty awesome the technical offerings is great as well and I think it's more so the customization because while Roblox is a lot more accessible it comes with the sacrifice that your baby through everything that means making custom UI is difficult on real editor making custom UI settings tools even animations is fantastically easy on Roblox you actually literally there was a a whole period where different plugins to make animations that are hacked together by community members for like doing a little war which animation editor is the best and this all goes to show that Roblox even have one and to this day I don't believe Roblox has its own animation energy y'all you either have to use one that's made by a you know like a loan scripter on Roblox or have your studio make one spend two years before you make the game or go on blender and try to do the math to import it onto Roblox Studio on unreal it's

pretty straightforward and easy got it Alex repeat any thoughts on the good parts of ufn development oh well I mean I would say one oh go ahead Pete good uh so I'll keep this real brief yeah honestly one is I don't moan about what it can't do the first thing was here's the idea over here let's keep it simple skip look like we can execute this very quickly and then jump into that Lego box of five years of fortnite content and go look for all the component parts that are going to help you achieve that creative goal and then if there are bits missing then you can turn to your art team and they'll have to build devices and props that take the quality level up certainly you know our latest version of Bankers is coming out one of our guys joined us from OverWatch he just spent a week on it it looks absolutely stunning so you know his ability to do that and dive into that creativity is awesome the second one it honestly is and it's kind of what Arthur said I don't have to worry about cross play accounts infrastructure service uptime I don't

have to worry about any of that and obviously for our other game clearly we do and that that's a very unique thing which allows you to just push I mean I went in vacation to Europe the day after Bank hours came out there's no way on Earth I've been able to do that for the last 15 years [Laughter] yeah I would all of that is true I would add that um you know the uefn proof is also a familiar face you know there's the gazillion developers out there have been using Unreal and it's uh just a lot familiar there to get going on Day Zero yeah and actually just we we had this idea that close quarter combat in streets and buildings in a bank I saw would be fun and within 24 hours we took one of our street levels from Project X and moved it over to UEFA and clearly it wasn't perfect from a you know being able to Vault and move around the environment but it did prove that with two teams in streets and buildings

in 24 hours that that was actually fun we had a really great time that first day and decided that it was worth investing more time in because we were we were able to move things over from unreal very quickly and play it in a day and by the second day actually get into you know more more hardcore development on the idea itself so that was really cool it wasn't perfect because our characters run and move very different from fortnite but it was good enough good enough it's probably a good headline honestly yeah and not to Moon about the things that ufn can't do but maybe the positive spin on this next question for me is like so given some of the things we we talked about you know saving State and things like that but if you guys were to think about some of the things that you wish epic would address next to to make it a more vibrant or you know usable platform what would be some of the things that you guys would hope that ufn would be adding soon to expand opportunities or

build better experiences for for the for the players that you guys are hoping to capture um well you know there's some obvious things I did and feature-wise that I think would help expand the kinds of games that we can make and right now we are in that like Pete was saying you know the the character uh camera control is all sort of based on fortnite so being able to have a little bit more um control over those elements of gameplay will open up other genres open with up other styles at Play um another thing that I think would be great for just the community in general is just more ways to um talk to our community um uh you know being being able to um uh get input and data from players will just help us make better games and help connect our players with each other and those kinds of features uh I think would be super welcomed by the community also

yeah I'd second that I think uh if you just look at one data point it's very frustrating having worked at Zynga for three years which was a bit like building games on Wall Street the idea that all I have is average session length with that I'm just going insane because what I really want to be able to do is which which top 10 players are spending absolutely the most time and what they like to see from us next and that's difficult because we're not really in the business of building a live service at this point because there's no persistence so it's round by round very ephemeral bancaster experience and we knew that going in my ass in going into the new year and I've had this conversation with that because at some point we have some aspirations around social gatherings and uh simulations and obviously being under these are some unique opportunities there to do things in real life whatever that might be and we have lots of different parts of the business where we could reward our VIPs

in very unique and interesting ways with our keyboard to our apparel or our energy drink or the things that we do in real life and I'd just like to create some simple system where I could understand who the fortnite players were bound that to 100 thieves account and then create leaderboards and social systems and connections for our community so we know who they are and they could come back persistently and do really cool stuff be rewarded for that in-game in software and also in real life and you know that's a fairly simple thing but a very difficult thing for a public no not public but a large company to do because it's fraught with the rest the moment you open up an HTTP window and connect accounts but for me that that would be a great sort of big social lift for some of the things we'd want to do outside of individual games I uh I completely Echo with both on Alex and Pete say more of a centralized Community I think that's the biggest strength that Roblox has everyone is together the community is what makes

Roblox um it's what brings them money is what brings everyone money so a more centralized Community but uh uh coming in as a Rolex developer make it way more accessible now if you give unreal Editor to any you know industry professional they're gonna know what to do and they're going to start making the big bucks easily but if you want to compete with Roblox you gotta think of the mind of quite literally a five-year-old trying to make a game for the first time ever it is pretty difficult to just immediately hop on on the real editor and publish a game whether it's a a little maze game or also a rip-off of some other game it's uh you just gotta make it easier you gotta make it more accessible and I need to interject with this one other thing I think the problem with the comparison of fortnite creative versus um Roblox I completely forgot my own platform Rolex uh is it's made by a different audience

than what unreal is intended for you've got a bunch of teenagers just going on you know Reddit saying you know Roblox is better because Lua is a much more easier language to learn and the thing is you don't really learn Lua on Roblox most of it is done for you um so it's really two big beasts and really what makes Rolex completely competitively different from unreal in the end long skim things is just the player base and so the player base can only be grown by the r formation accessibility got it yeah blue is pretty mature at this point I mean I remember using Lua to write the events and scripts in Fable for God's sake like it's been around forever um and verse I know there's a lot of similarities but yeah for our C plus plus sort of uh computer science grads and Engineers that can be very frustrating too so it's kind of interesting where Community can't quite figure out the complexity and some of my

team were just like good Lord are you going to make me work on that again so we we actually have a really nice sweet spot of people that were hiring specifically to try and combat that problem which is why much of our team comes from the community and you know Engineers these days aren't just coming out of you know computer science classes they're coming in as game lovers and game makers and could pretty much do anything and I this is the most diverse team I've ever had in terms of its team makeup overall but also their overall abilities it's very difficult on my team so that person does blah they do everything and that's what you know verse gives them it lets them do everything yeah there was a word on the street was that internally within epic there was a kind of discussion and debate about whether it was too soon to launch given some of the limitations that you guys have been talking about do you guys what do you guys think did they launch it too early do you think it was rushed or I I mean I guess for you guys you guys are early adopters so it's fine for you guys but maybe the typical developer

um what do you guys think I I think they released a a pretty good beta okay it's a really good beta yeah I'd say the same it's like coming back to earlier I you know accessories I've got older in the games business you you end up being surrounded by some frequently some fairly jaded people which I don't understand because we get to make video games for a living and here we have nearly 30 years later I'm still thrilled by that opportunity so it's very easy to be jaded and complained I mean Alex is right it's a good beta on it it does what it needs to do and it's certainly good enough um and yeah it's easy to complain I I would argue it was not ready for prime time but the other thing is as we all know what do you what else are you gonna do to spend another six months another 12 months like it's never ready and so my learning on free to play mobile I can't remember who said this to me it was great advice it's like release something you're quite ashamed of

otherwise you left it too long and I I would say the same thing it's not quite ready but it's good enough I think it's way better they release it than held it because they're getting so much feedback right now and they're probably working on much better things for the community now than they would have if it was just inside the walls because really that's what drives your priorities right is what are your community asking you for and they've been really good at that by the way they're certainly not closing the doors on the walls and sitting in meetings and and making all the decisions for themselves their Outreach has been really good at I've got to say honestly overall a real pleasure to work with just across the board just such a great company to work with which makes it agreed mostly they really want this to work right and they're you know they're listening so I agree as well I mean uh I got a huge bias because 2006 Roblox was absolutely nothing compared to what the

uh first release of unreal editor is so for me it's a blessing like sure doesn't have everything that may that might make you migrate offer Roblox now but it sure is a hell of a lot better than what Roblox was initially but I think with the power Community especially over their acceptance of feedback so nonchalantly the unreal editor was gonna is gonna grow faster than Roblox ever has and especially with the already proven base that Rolex has done by pioneering all those ugz stuff it's got a really well paid road ahead of it right well Arthur for you and you still I assume you still know a lot of Roblox developers what do you think is keeping them from jumping over to UF and what would it take to get more because as discussed uh you know there's there's still a smaller Community for ufn right now in the current state so what will it take for more Roblox guys is it going to be the economics is it going to be some specific features that they're waiting for

um clearly if you can't save State there's certain games that just can't come over from Roblox yet um but what do you think um the first obvious answer is that they don't want to learn C plus plus uh they want to stick to your uh to Lua for now because why learn a much more complex language when you can just learn a little bit of Lua and make more potentially on Roblox so it's more of a personal situation that's not a fault of either platform it's just that real life is the upper hand in terms of Basics but really it's just the popularity of unreal editor if you hear unreal editor anywhere it's going to be amongst game developers you don't go up to like some random kid on a shoot like hey you uh you play games on root editor like they're not really going to respond to that pretty well but to Roblox they will it's just the popularity of both platforms and um I actually think that's a really important point where it comes back to really what office saying about platform engines and then what Alex said about ideas I had

this weird memory so I think this is so true that when it comes to content it's all about the software somebody asked me recently how's the EPL Burnout Paradise and somebody asked me which console it came out on and I couldn't remember because all I could remember was the game obviously it took me like a few minutes and then of course but it wasn't my default go-to I was like oh I remember the game I remember the team and I think over time you know people talk about ideas and games and the social content and the connections they've made with people the platform and the engine is like who cares and I think fortnite's very very similar so it's all about content as it should be because it always has been okay all right guys I thought we could um oh go ahead I was gonna ask was that Genesis Burnout Paradise has been on the Genesis 360. I suppose 360. exactly yeah wow okay PS3 well we're not here to talk about

PlayStation 3 because that's a different conversation that thing all right guys let's talk future and in terms of like whether it's upcoming changes or Trends related to uefn what do you guys is come what do you guys think is coming up for the platform any any predictions from you guys short time short term or long term what should people be watching out for uh I I I think uh more Evergreen game genres and Concepts that'll land with persistence and stick that's where we're making it but we're preparing for persistence because I think it's coming sooner than people think and that's a real game change upon the pun because it allows you to do way more interesting things and obviously more importantly will allow you to encourage players to come back one of your game's got enough but two because they're being

able to continue to take progress so short term that long term I've already talked about that in terms of our studio and our connectivity between Triple A and the the studios hiring and talent that we bring in my sense is um you know that fortnite has been able to maintain a fairly stable player base for many years just on the back of fortnite and with uh epic bringing more properties into that ecosystem and not just like skins but actual play paradigms and with UF and opening up potentially new genres I think I think I mean this whole idea is that this platform is going to grow so what does it mean when fortnite which is already a fairly large community starts growing on the back of more diverse and more richer and different experiences I wouldn't be surprised if there's a like a branding

pivot or just a a you know what is this you know is it still fortnite is it fortnite or is this now is this a platform that's got a new name I don't know um but I think that's I I I think that is their long-term strategy it is it is one of them and if they're successful then this platform continues to get bigger um which uh I think is really interesting we might see it yeah I know even in the shoulder player showing up Etc yeah I think they're uh even even in the short term certainly moving that current um Island Discovery page more Central towards you know what fortnite is on the landing page so you starting to reduce friction just by doing that honestly and spending more time on that piece of the product because I do know that the time spent in in islands is growing exponentially even when compared and contrasted to fortnite itself because

obviously everyone got super excited about GDC about the opportunity to share 40 of Revenue but let's not forget you're in the pool with fortnite so it's like it's not a fair share it's a big there's a big boy in that pool somebody you need to do the math before you get excited about the big number yeah unreal editors got a really good ecosystem already you have a huge player base so the only way is up but I'm more concerned about The Branding much like Alex says like What's it gonna be uh is it just gonna be called unreal fortnite editors are going to be called something else I think Brandon is what really matters because right now if you know what it is it's probably because you're a developer majority of the time they're wanting to probably Rebrand and make sure it's reflecting for both the consumer and the developer mutter Roblox is what is Roblox oh it's a platform we can play games or make games was Unreal fortnite editor well it's uh it's a bit more complex than the

name so it's gonna grow it's gonna grow I know it it just has a huge player base and fortnite I mean sorry the unreal editor it sorry confused me um has already proven a lot of technical applications and additions and it's just a short time span and it's willing to listen to the community and is willing to be persistent it wants to stick around forever because there's a huge untapped market for higher end ugc products or games well there's one there's one persistent and consistent thing here which is unreal so who knows rolling the dice maybe Tim Sweeney just renames epic games unreal and that just becomes the overall platform in the same way that metal was renamed from Facebook because unreal is the consistency who knows it is interesting like when I talk to my my like family or or you know to folks who are don't work in the industry I never say I'm making games on uefn because that's like it's it's like it's like as

you say it's like kind of a clumsy acronym but if I say oh I'm making games for fortnite everybody knows what fortnite is yeah right but by the way one other question I had is like in terms of the team sizes and P you mentioned that you guys are building games in like six weeks like what are the size of the teams that are generally required to build for uefn well I could only talk to Bankers that was five five people six but I don't I don't include myself because I can't do anything which is the old producer joke so there was uh yeah five people for six weeks and uh uh yeah and the makeup was was one very senior engineer who came joined us from take two want junior phenomenal engineer who joined us from a community a level designer that joined us from CS go and then two artists that joined us from OverWatch and so that those five people got after it real fast and uh yeah no crunch no weekends nothing past 6 p.m

just real completion urgency we played and tested every day we did two big sessions with our creators and our founders with Valkyrie and Jack good nature and those iterations made the game still better and um yeah that's why we maintained the speed because we just time boxed and planned it very efficiently that was a that was a joy actually to do it so quickly and release it when we said we wanted to and test out some of that thesis but he has five people it looks similar for you it it remarkably similar um we do have we have many projects that we're working on um some are smaller than that some are bigger but um but yeah I'm thinking what the current sort of where the puck is today you know where we're where we're skating that's kind of feels like the right um the right play Arthur compared to Roblox I assume that's kind of similar five-ish people six weeks or is it different for Roblox it's usually less maybe she's

like two people like a Lua programmer or 3D artist and a guy that does both because they can't afford to four four yeah yeah talking to the uh I've become pretty good friends with the guys who made front lines and almost three of them took a year but it was through there okay okay well guys I I think that's all the questions I have maybe if we can end um it'd be great if you guys could maybe just say a little bit about your company and if you have a last message or last uh you know kind of prediction for what's gonna happen with uafn we can you can see that now and maybe starting with you Pete yeah um you know 100 thieves I think the other thing I forgot to mention was it doesn't matter about my resume a lot of people just consider us in a jokey sense as the hoodie org and so honestly the other thing is that it legitimized our ability to build software I mean you

know it was in our interpretation I don't care about the money in our view what the effort we made it was a hit and now we want to make three four more and we have a plan and a roadmap that extends out 18 months and uh so I'm really excited about it we're constructing our studio to take advantage of the UEFA and unreal so that we can create quite a unique culture because I think long term unreal six is some combination of an editor that sits on top of a powerful engine and when Studios and communities have come together I think we're in a unique spot but I think companies like Alex is that too because you're just going to do something very quickly without any of that Legacy that there's good Legacy in in game development over the last quarter Century for me but there's also some some things I'd like to leave behind some some Legacy we don't have any of that so super excited about the future for sure got it Alex final words uh well um similarly very excited about uh this platform and what we could do at look North world I I I I'd like to say that

it's kind of like we're making a movie in the movie theater uh we have a very active Discord and we work with uh with that Community to test our games but because these Dev Cycles are so short we can turn things around super quickly and it really is a great flywheel for Innovation um so yeah if you want to actually take part in it come visit us on our Discord um and uh and you know watch watch the movie help us make the games Arthur unreal has got a lot a lot of potential and I think one day it might even above the ranks of Roblox because of the mature content you can create on it and the potential Limitless possibilities they already started including streaming of your content map sizes which is awesome uh maybe someday I will come out retirement to work on unrew editor or somewhere I'll get hired at so I'm

really excited to see what the future is because for I know it'll affect me directly all right all right gentlemen Pete Alex Arthur thank you so much for your time and insights and for our audience we will catch you next time thanks guys eggs huge pleasure cheers [Music] foreign