Crossovers aren’t just a part of the gaming industry; they’re a part that fuels many pieces of content. In fact, you could argue that certain games run on the concept of crossing over with other universes and growing what’s within the core game. Epic Games knows this better than most, as it’s spent YEARS trying to bring more people into games like Fortnite via the numerous skins that it offers. TV shows, movies, anime, comics, other video game properties, nothing is off limits. Yet, they want more, and more specifically, they want more via games like Roblox. Confused? Don’t worry, we’ll explain.
Tim Sweeney, the head of Epic Games, commented on the Lex Fridman podcast that a future goal of his is to be able to take the skins from his legendary title and bring it over to other games without an issue. Obviously, things don’t work exactly that simply, but that’s not stopping Sweeny from thinking about it:
“We are left in a world where people can’t seamlessly move from game to game, bringing their friends and stuff. So the solution to this is to federate and connect all the systems together. All the players and all the different platforms can be recognized by their name. Put the ‘at’ sign in it so your Xbox names, or your Epic names, Steam names can all live together in a single space. The next and bigger challenge is unifying the economies too. There is a huge set of games that have in common the idea of a cosmetic system that does not impact gameplay outcomes. That you could own an outfit in Fortnite, own an outfit in Roblox, and own the same outfit in maybe Call of Duty—and maybe a hundred or two hundred other games—and actually expect they would work together.”
On a certain level, you can understand what he’s going for and why he would want it. The problem here isn’t just programming, it’s rights ownership. After all, the reason that Epic Games and other titles are able to do those crossovers is because they purchase the rights to them. If a cosmetic skin were to just jump from one game to another, that would have to be accounted for in the deal itself, which could be tricky…and potentially be very costly.
Still, it’s not the worst of ideas, as many would love the ability to take such skins and bring them around so they can rep their favorite characters or franchises.
