MUSURE Storytime: How we won the Epic Games Megagrant
Hi MUSUREs!
Today, we want to tell you about something very important that happened to us last year: winning the Epic Games’s Megagrant. It was a unique opportunity that allowed us to grow in new, unexpected ways and to this day continues to expand our creative possibilities here at MUSURE world.
For this, we reached out to Tano, our CEO, so he could tell us in detail what it was like to go through that incredible experience.
First, what is a Megagrant?
If you don’t know, Epic Games is an important American-based videogame company. Besides having incredible games like the Gears of War series or Fortnite, they also developed the famous graphics engine Unreal Engine.
Epic Games is always looking for new ways to innovate, believing that videogames are a space for socializing and creating new experiences, connecting worlds from thousands of miles away.
In 2019 they launched the Epic Megagrant project, an initiative for helping Creators with their projects. The grant would be offered to videogame developers, media and entertainment creators, and tools developers that made upstanding work using Unreal Engine.
Prizes, which range from 5,000 to 500,000 USD, can help cover a wide variety of creative and technical activities necessary for the development of games, tools and platforms. The winners maintain property over their IP and have freedom to publish whenever and however they want.
This is a unique opportunity that can open the doors for hundreds of creators! The founder and CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeny said “At Epic we are successful when developers are successful, we are reinvesting in all areas of the community of Unreal Engine development, and we are also committed to accelerating the supply of open content, tools and knowledge”.
A win for MUSURE world
In 2021, after the company Valve had prohibited all blockchain-based videogames on Steam, their online store, Epic Games announced that the Epic Games Store would stand behind these kinds of projects, always respecting the pertinent laws and with their terms open to the public.
This showed Epic Games’ interest in continuing to innovate in the videogame industry. Being willing to bet on the new blockchain-powered world is a sign of a company that thinks of progress not as a competition, but as something to be shared.
At the time, MUSURE world was a much smaller project, managed by Tano and a few other members of the team. But we were starting to gain traction, and our next step had us very excited: Digital shows inside 3D worlds. To achieve this, we used the last version of Unreal Engine (Unreal Engine 5) to create more immersive and interactive virtual worlds.
We decided to apply to the MegaGrant initiative because we had a lot of respect for Epic Games and what they were trying to achieve. We really wanted to be a part of it!
The application process was easy, the hard part would be winning the Grant. For several months, Tano would send in mails with progress updates on the development of the project to show the dedication and passion that MUSURE world had.
In July 2021, we held an amazing event: A virtual show with BLANCAh, inspired by everything drives us forward and the energy that the MUSURE world community has. Shortly after, we received news from Epic Games. The show had grabbed their attention, and just a few months later we were told we had won the Grant.
It was beautiful! Epic Games’ recognition showed us this was the right path and that we had to keep pushing MUSURE world forward.
Where we are today
This prize and validation from Unreal Engine and Epic Games was key to creating trust in MUSURE world as a project. It was the beginning to a long term partnership that elevated our standards and gave us more motivation than ever to keep moving forward.
The Megagrant changed everything. We had never had this kind of income before. It allowed us to expand the MUSURE world team, hiring other talented and passionate professionals in economics, UX/UI, writers, community growers, Creators and more developers from the videogame world that contributed amazing things to the project.
Thanks to all of this we were able to focus more in perfecting MUSURE world’s design, functionality, aesthetics and social reach. We also continued developing the economic and security systems that allowed Creators and Gamer to benefit and grow inside the platform.
To this day we still keep in touch with Epic Games, knowing MUSURE world has their support and that they will stay on our side as our possibilities keep expanding.
But all of this was just the beginning. We still have a long path ahead, and we are as excited as ever! We can’t wait to see everything that will come in the future, we hope you stick around to see it too.
See you soon!
MUSURE world
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