Ever since Facebook rebranded to Meta, the industry started to massively shift towards this so-called metaverse. And this is making things more complicated.
This is because sooner than later, it was realized that the metaverse may not be suitable for everybody.
People had little clue to what could happen in this virtual world, until the first cases of virtual sexual harassments and assaults happened on Meta's virtual world Horizon Worlds.
Later, a researchers found that the metaverse is not at all safe for children due to the lack of safety and security feature.
Days after Epic Games and Lego said they were teaming up to build a family-friendly metaverse, Epic Games announced that The Lego Group is also putting money into Epic, amounting to $1 billion.
At the same time, it also announced that Sony is tripling its investment in Epic, on top of its existing ones, increasing them to $1 billion.
On Lego's part, the announcement was made by Kirkbi, the holding company that owns The Lego Group.
Kirkbi’s chief executive Søren Thorup Sørensen noted that "a proportion of our investments is focused on trends we believe will impact the future world that we and our children will live in."
The $1 billion stake aligns with that mission, Sørensen said.
And as for Sony, the PlayStation maker, which already has a minority interest in Epic, wants to create a “new social entertainment exploring the connection between digital and physical worlds," according to a press release.
"As a creative entertainment company, we are thrilled to invest in Epic to deepen our relationship in the metaverse field, a space where creators and users share their time," said Sony Group president, chairman, and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida in the press release. "We are also confident that Epic’s expertise, including their powerful game engine, combined with Sony’s technologies, will accelerate our various efforts such as the development of new digital fan experiences in sports and our virtual production initiatives."
"We are also confident that Epic’s expertise, including their powerful game engine, combined with Sony’s technologies, will accelerate our various efforts," Kenichiro Yoshido, Sony’s chief executive, said in a statement provided by Epic. Epic Games launched Unreal Engine 5 one week ago.
With the huge investments by the two companies, the press release stated that they would bring Epic's estimated valuation to 31.5 billion.
The metaverse concept isn't new at all. In fact, games like Roblox and Minecraft, as well as the social media Second Life, have been in the business for years.
Epic also has its own "metaverse", which is largely taken place within Fortnite, where third-party marketers have regularly collaborated on themed skins and other virtual items, or staged virtual events like trailer premieres or concerts.
But the hype around the metaverse, in a sense that it is a proposed network of vast virtual worlds made by many developers working together to bring the real world to the digital world, has taken the corporate world by storm, ever since Facebook kicked off the trend.
And here, the investments by both Sony and Lego all align with Epic’s broader strategy of defining and administering the “metaverse” through the same concept that Facebook, Microsoft, and some others have latched themselves onto.
According to Epic's CEO and founder Tim Sweeney, “this investment will accelerate our work to build the metaverse and create spaces where players can have fun with friends, brands can build creative and immersive experiences, and creators can build a community and thrive.”
The investment comes after Epic officially released Unreal Engine 5, an engine that will likely play a significant role in developing whatever non-Fortnite metaverse Epic has in mind.
