Epic Games Releases New Programming Language for the Metaverse

The Fortnite studio is making a significant metaverse technology advancement while aiming to overcome the complexities of building virtual worlds with its new programming language.

According to Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, virtual real-time three-dimensional interactions, a decentralized digital economy, and a platform open to creatives and developers are the core components of the ideal metaverse. Also, every application on an open metaverse must be interoperable and communicate dynamically with one another, as opposed to only being available on the same store. Building an open metaverse for all is no mean feat, and it certainly means developing easily accessible and open-source programming languages.

Toward building a metaverse that aligns with its CEO’s vision, which it admits is a complex affair, Epic Games has revealed that it has been working on a new programming language to help shape the future of the digital economy. The project has been in the works for years, and details about it have now come to light.

Epic Games’ new programming language is called Verse. Like the open metaverse, which the company has touted as the only way forward for the virtual world, Verse will be developed openly, with contributions from several developers worldwide. Also, Epic has pledged to make all tools, descriptions, and specifications of the new language available to the public without restrictions.

In a presentation, the company’s developers admitted that Verse would not be developed with any new programming language, as existing variations are Turing-complete. Yet, Verse will bring more to the table than its predecessors, with impressive scalability, supporting applications built by millions of developers for billions of users. Also, Verse will offer more than existing programming languages in interoperability and support for transactions.

Tim Sweeney’s confidence in the Metaverse concept has been rock solid from the outset. Epic Games is the brand behind the Unreal 3D Engine, one of the most popular frameworks for building virtual worlds. With the Unreal Engine, Epic Games controls one of the fundamental technologies for the creation of the metaverse, and the company also runs Fortnite, which many will argue is the most successful proto-metaverse.

The Fortnite studio has made significant strides in building the metaverse, and its accomplishments have attracted investments from top players in the technology space. Sony and KIRKBI invested in Epic Games earlier in 2022, with the former putting in a whopping $1.25 billion. KIRKBI was not far behind with another billion-dollar investment, which raised Epic’s valuation to over $31 billion.

These large-scale investments highlight Fortnite’s position as a social tool for facilitating meetings and events beyond metaverse gaming. Notably, these companies invested in Epic before Facebook rebranded to Meta and began its push to monopolize the metaverse.

Rumors about Epic’s new programming language have now been confirmed true. Mentions of possible extended reality hardware and software from the company have gone on for years, and any subsequent announcement from Epic Games regarding that will not come as a surprise. With Verse, Unreal Engine, the partnership with Sony and KIRKBI, and the company’s investments in metaverse tools like the virtual human builder MetaHuman Creator, Epic Games has truly arrived in the Metaverse, and more virtually-inclined solutions will come from the company in the future.