The CEO and co-founder of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, is against closed software ecosystems, as a result of its legal battles with Google and Apple, adding that the metaverse refers to a broad concept and it shouldn’t be controlled by just one entity.
“The metaverse is a term like the internet. No company can own it.”
The metaverse is referring to the potential future evolution of the internet, a world in which games, social interactions, or even work, would take place in a 3D environment, using avatars. NFTs are expected to play an important part in this world as well.
Facebook is seen as the biggest name in this space after the company presented its vision for an online world in October. Not only that, but Facebook also changed its company name to Meta, and has begun investing a lot in this space, planning to hire 10,000 people in Europe. Mark Zuckerberg declared that the company will build “responsibly” in the space.
But many aren’t too keen on the influence Facebook could have on this. For example, the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands, Yat Siu, has openly declared that he believes Facebook and Tencent (a Chinese tech giant) as “threats” to an open metaverse.
Both Siu and Sweeney stated that companies are now in a race to create this space.
He further added:
“The next three years are going to be critical for all of the metaverse-aspiring companies like Epic, Roblox, Microsoft, [and] Facebook. It’s kind of a race to get to a billion users. Whoever brings on a billion users first would be the presumed leader in setting the standards.”
Fortnite is seen as the closest thing we have to a metaverse now as tens of millions of players log in every day to compete, socialize, and create together. Everything takes part in a 3D world that lets users customize their avatars with character skins from music, movies, and TV.
Sweeney’s opposition to centralized control of the metaverse is similar to Epic’s struggle against “walled garden” ecosystems such as the Play Store of Android and the App Store of iOS. Epic began fighting both of them as a result of the required cut of all sales that both stores ask. Then again, Fortnite is also a closed ecosystem.
Fortnite players have the option of purchasing in-game items using virtual currency that is acquired using real money but they do not have the option of moving the digital assets off of the platform or reselling them to make a profit. Meanwhile, decentralized metaverse games such as Decentraland and The Sandbox were created using interoperable, user-controlled NFTs.
“Over the coming decades, the metaverse has the potential to become a multi-trillion-dollar part of the world economy,” concluded Sweeney.