While the word “metaverse” pops up so often in my inbox now it’s essentially the email equivalent of white noise, when Epic Games has made a specific investment in the metaverse, that’s when you want to start paying attention. Epic is investing in metaverse infrastructure developer Hadean as part of its latest $30 million funding round, and it could have big implications for the company’s future.

Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, is the owner of one of the many video game-based metaverses that already existed before the term became popular, along with other games like Roblox and Minecraft. Unlike the mostly barren, blockchain-based metaverses that made headlines for selling off parcels of NFT land a while back, games like Fortnite have thriving ecosystems and massively…