Recently it was announced that the LEGO Group and Epic Games were entering into a long-term partnership in order to build a family-friendly metaverse, which the companies hope will be able to teach children life skills while maintaining a safe environment online. This partnership has since developed further and now involves another major entertainment media company, along with several high-level investments in Epic Games.
In April 2021 Epic Games had acquired $1 billion in funding from various investors. Sony was responsible for $200 million of this as it was seeking to promote a “long term vision for the metaverse.”
Sony and KIRKBI appear to still be dedicated to this vision as both companies have now invested a further $1 billion each into Epic Games in order to continue forward with this family-friendly metaverse project. It seems that the project is planning to use Epic’s game engine with Sony’s technology, while leaving the design and nature of the metaverse itself to KIRKBI and the LEGO Group. The game engine in question must be Unreal Engine 5 which is already being utilized for multiple game titles. The engine only recently became available to third-party developers, and usually this works with a percentage fee to be paid to Epic Games only after the developed game reaches a certain level of monetary success.
As for the development of a metaverse however, Epic Games wants to be involved throughout the entire project. Metaverses could be big business in the near future as nearly every major entertainment giant has a metaverse in development including Bandai Namco and Disney. A successful metaverse project has yet to be released, but with so many companies willing to invest hundreds of millions into getting it right, there must be some kind of potential seen in the idea.
KIRKBI as the owner of LEGO has the keys to a massive potential property with which it could make a successful metaverse, but it does not have the technological expertise or game engine needed to make one. LEGO and Sony are both throwing their hats into the ring with Epic Games, but this could end up being be a smart investment for all three companies. Not only does each company get to share in the other's strengths, but if metaverses are proven to be a failure then all three companies will share the brunt of the blow, unlike other media companies that are solo-developing metaverses with their own money.
Sony, LEGO, and Epic Games may have a friendly relationship with each other, but this three-way partnership may begin and end with the metaverse project, as Epic Games’ investors can only buy what's known as a common stock. Essentially this is a percentage share of the company and its revenue, but Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney remains as the company's main shareholder and thus control of Epic Games' future direction lies solely with him.
Source: Epic Games