TL;DR
- Yuga Labs acquires Improbable’s Unreal Engine creator platform and a perpetual license for its high-concurrency tech.
- The tech stack proved capable of hosting over 2,100 concurrent players, setting a Guinness World Record.
- This strategic focus follows Yuga’s 2025 reset of selling side projects (CryptoPunks, Moonbirds) to concentrate resources.
Yuga Labs closed the year with a decisive move for Otherside. The company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) acquired the Unreal Engine creator platform used for its metaverse and secured a perpetual license to Improbable’s high-concurrency technology, built for large real-time player counts. The deal also brings a cohort of Improbable developers and engineers under Yuga’s umbrella, with operational integration slated for early next year.
Co-founder Greg Solano framed the goal clearly: build faster and invest directly in creators. With core tools in-house, the studio reduces coordination costs, shortens release cycles, and aligns content pipelines and technical support under one stack. Yuga also streamlined scope during 2025, selling prior acquisitions such as CryptoPunks, Meebits, and Moonbirds to concentrate capital and talent on BAYC and Otherside. Public tests and system upgrades followed, with clear improvements in gameplay, editing workflows, and content libraries.
Creator toolkit and large-scale multiplayer
The concurrency layer proved its capacity during Project Dragon, a massive shooter demo that hosted over 2,100 players on a single server, a Guinness World Record. Engineering teams extracted metrics from those events and tuned netcode, entity streaming, and physics to lower latency and stabilize frame pacing. Live trials fed a tight loop: launch, measure, optimize.
The Otherside Development Kit (ODK) anchors production. The package offers roughly 1,000 assets across 29 biomes, plus utilities for AI-assisted chat, emote creation, and graffiti tools. Creators import scenes, scripts, and props, iterate with hot reload, and publish to browser, mobile, and desktop. That workflow reduces onboarding frictions and shortens time from concept to playable session.
The agreement with Improbable grants a long-term license to the concurrency stack, a critical component for persistent worlds with high player density, spatial voice chat, and combat logic. By folding the layer into internal pipelines, Yuga avoids third-party bottlenecks, controls roadmaps, and prioritizes server stability during peak events.
Distribution and monetization also advance. Otherside positions itself as a creator-first hub with free tools, responsive technical support, usage analytics, and digital property rights via NFTs and fungible assets. Partnerships on the publishing side aim to reach broader audiences while keeping account systems and inventories portable across experiences.
The operational reset reflects broader Web3 gaming signals in 2025: tighter funding for concepts without traction, stronger scrutiny on retention, and more weight on organic engagement over reward farming. Yuga trimmed side bets, concentrated teams around a single flagship product, and funneled resources into infrastructure and user-facing features that deliver measurable playtime.
Why the deal matters for builders and players
Control over core technology enables faster updates, fewer integration delays, and more predictable performance during showcases and tournaments. A unified toolchain also encourages external studios to commit resources, since build-test-ship cycles become simpler and support lines run through one organization. For players, high concurrency, stable servers, and portable ownership translate into smoother sessions and inventories that carry across worlds.
Yuga Labs now holds the creator platform, the concurrency license, and a reinforced team for Otherside. Momentum in 2025 suggests a clear direction: empower creators, scale multiplayer, and anchor virtual economies with verifiable ownership. If execution keeps pace, Otherside advances as a credible venue for building and playing large social experiences where users keep their assets across connected worlds.
