Interview with Unreal Engine's Mark Petit on his view of the Metaverse as an immersive version of the internet, the need to have open standards for it, and more
Context & Ripple Effects
Petit's interview is the latest entry in a nearly decadelong Epic Games campaign to define the metaverse on its own terms. It began with Tim Sweeney's 2016 Q&A calling for standardized frameworks, ran through Epic's push against Apple and Google's app-store policies, and continued in the Sweeney–Persson conversation on an open metaverse and walled gardens.
What Petit adds is the Unreal Engine side of the argument: he frames the metaverse as an immersive version of the internet and argues it needs open standards — which matters because whoever writes those standards shapes whether the next phase of the internet stays open, a question commentators warn could otherwise reproduce today's centralized, financialized tech ecosystem.
First-order effects
- Epic gains another public voice arguing that the metaverse should be built on open standards, reinforcing the position Sweeney and Sax Persson have staked out while keeping Unreal Engine positioned as the likely tooling layer for such a world.
- Platform owners whose walled-garden models Epic has attacked — most prominently in Sweeney's comments on Apple and Google's app-store policies — face a sustained narrative counterweight arguing their model should not carry over into immersive computing.
Second-order effects
- Competing metaverse definitions multiply: Matthew Ball's book-length framing of the metaverse as the next phase of the internet and Meta's own pivot give buyers and developers several incompatible visions to choose among, raising the stakes of any eventual standards body.
- If interoperability becomes table stakes, the battleground shifts toward cross-platform compatibility as core infrastructure rather than a per-title feature, pressuring every platform holder to decide what they will and won't interconnect with.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward a structural fork: an open-standards metaverse would move competitive advantage from owning the platform to building the engines, content, and services on top of it — or, if incumbents prevail, the metaverse risks mirroring today's centralized, financialized ecosystem, with play-to-earn games cited as a cautionary development pattern.
The trend: The metaverse debate is consolidating into a standards fight between Epic-style open-interoperability advocates and incumbent platform owners, with each new definition offered by Epic figures narrowing how that contest will be settled.