The WorldBuilder Summit has revealed new details about its programming and monetization plans, with an eye toward the creator community.
The WorldBuilder Summit bills itself as the first in-person conference dedicated to user-generated content (UGC) creators — the individual developers and studios building virtual worlds and interactive experiences inside platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. It’s slated to take place on April 23, 2026 at the London West Hollywood hotel in Los Angeles.
Today, January 26, the event’s organizers announced a wave of new information about the WorldBuilder Summit, including a fireside chat with Do Big Studios, a pitch competition awarding $10,000 development grants to two winners and a “Founders Program” that enables participating creators to pay $1,000 or $4,000 access to bonus features like merchandise and a VIP dinner.
“We’ll have some sponsors to announce really soon — some people who have already come on board and like what we’re doing,” said WorldBuilder Summit executive director Scott Benzie in an interview with GamesBeat. “A lot of the studios that we’ve talked to about being sponsors are actually more interested in the Founders Program than they are in a traditional sponsorship.”
Although the WorldBuilder Summit is inviting all stakeholders in the UGC ecosystem to attend — from creators to agencies, brands and platforms — all of the event’s announcements today were angled toward UGC creators, reflecting the crucial nature of creator buy-in for the success of events in the metaverse space. Ultimately, all activity and engagement inside UGC platforms stems from the creators, and for brands and advertisers interested in the space, being able to build more direct relationships with creators is a key selling point for in-person events like the WorldBuilder Summit.
Do Big Studios is the owner of some of the largest and most popular UGC experiences, including “Grow a Garden” and “Steal a Brainrot,” with Benzie flagging the studio’s participation in the WorldBuilder Summit as a sign of creators’ growing interest in the conference. Do Big Studios chief financial officer Justin Peress will be representing the company, speaking in a fireside chat hosted by Signum Growth / AD8 Pop CEO Angela Dalton.
“We’re in the midst of a significant entertainment shift, one where creators are founders, games are platforms and IP is built with continuous community input,” Peress said in a press release. “UGC is collapsing the distance between idea and audience, and studios like Do Big exist to help creators turn that speed into scale. WorldBuilder Summit is a chance to proudly share with the world what’s already happening inside UGC and spotlight the builders shaping what comes next.”
The WorldBuilder Summit is not the first conference dedicated to UGC creators; after all, Roblox and Epic Games have respectively operated Roblox Developers Conference and Unreal Fest annually for years. But the WorldBuilder Summit is innovative in that it is one of the first conferences for UGC creators that is platform-agnostic, inviting creators from Roblox, Fortnite and beyond to intermingle and discuss their work.
“We wanted to provide a space where, regardless of your platform of choice, you can come and have these discussions and meet the right people,” Benzie said. “I don’t know if consolidation is the right word, but the same way YouTube and TikTok work together — TikTok is a discovery tool to drive people to your YouTube — I think you’re going to see that happen in this market.”
Benzie has served as the CEO of the YouTube creator film festival Buffer Festival since 2016, and is now leveraging his considerable creator event experience to organize a conference for UGC creators, which he views as being in a similar position to video creators in the early days of YouTube. For more detailed knowledge and expertise on the UGC space, Benzie is leaning on partners like the UGC development studio Sawhorse Productions, whose co-founder and chief innovation officer Nic Hill is a member of the WorldBuilder Summit’s advisory board.
“The WorldBuilder Summit is the only conference exclusively dedicated to the UGC gaming space, and that focus matters,” Hill said in an interview with GamesBeat. “We’re here to share our experience helping brands succeed, grow the ecosystem together and spark new relationships that push the industry forward.”