Sony and Lego Group Owner KIRKBI Pump $2B into Unreal Engine’s Epic Games

Coming off the heels of the recent Epic Games and Lego Group collaboration announcement, the latter's head investment firm, alongside Sony, has fitted the Fortnite maker with $2 billion, allotting Epic a potential $31.5 billion valuation per customary closing conditions. The investment, announced via Epic on Apr. 11, is intended primarily to aid in advancing Epic's push into the metaverse, more specifically in enhancing its guise over child-friendly parameters in this forthcoming digital sphere.

Both Sony and KIRKBI are investing $1 billion into the Unreal Engine owner, which now sets Sony as among Epic Games' largest investors totaling about $1.45 billion over the last two years. In April of last year, the Japanese gaming giant put an additional $200 million towards Epic's future, on top of its previous $250 million push in July of 2020. Both Unreal Engine and the toolsets that power it is of immense importance to Sony's PlayStation, most prominently expressed in the now-released fifth iteration of the game-making platform.

"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. 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 and our virtual production initiatives," says Sony's President and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida.

Beyond simply console-based video games, Sony is likewise gearing up to debut its next iteration of the PlayStation VR system, aptly coined the PS VR2, slated for a preorder date sometime soon. No doubt, a portion of that investment is tied specifically toward this very arena, with virtual reality a more common stay component on the PlayStation platform moving forward.

Lego likewise sees the potential not merely in Epic's forthcoming metaverse strategy but also in the gaming world, as IP-licensed Lego experiences are among the most heralded in its portfolio. The most recent release of Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga proves Lego is as much a real-world toy company as it is a video gaming powerhouse, with sales reaching into the stratosphere and marking a first-ever for the series with a launch day Steam player count of over 82,000.

On Lego's front, KIRKBI CEO Søren Thorup Sørensen relays keen enthusiasm for the "playful and creative experiences" behind Epic Games. He goes on to explain,

"A proportion of our investments is focused on trends we believe will impact the future world that we and our children live in. This investment will accelerate our engagement in the world of digital play, and we are pleased to be investing in Epic Games to support their continued growth journey, with a long-term focus toward the future metaverse."

Epic highlights that while wholly exciting, various regulatory hurdles and "customary closing conditions" are still needed before the deal is completely finalized. Still, the optics prove that Epic is in line to be at the forefront of the metaverse's acceleration, best detailed by Mathew Ball in his long-winded 'The Metaverse Primer.'

The expansion of this so-called third iteration of the internet has become a topic of major discourse over the past several years, made all the more poignant following Facebook's rebranding to Meta. Companies from Microsoft to even Roblox are vying to be in this same realm, building out a totally listless digital realm that will house everything from contemporary online shopping to actual full-on gaming experiences in a digital sphere of influence.

With an emphasis largely being framed on better amplifying this space for the future of our youth, Epic's most recent investment round will hopefully prove worthwhile in the long run.