Geopolitical instability in the Middle East is threatening the supply chain of the petrochemical precursors to Acetyle-Butyl-Styrene, the primary plastic used in the creation of LEGO® Bricks. With the potential shortage of physical bricks, the LEGO Group have fast-tracked the beta testing phase of their new digital building tool, LEGO Builder Virtual.

“We were not anticipating this supply problem to become significant until 2035, which is why we had accelerated our approach to developing sustainable plastics in recent years. The current situation has caught us short, with crude oil deliveries already slowing around the world.” up and coming digital luminary April Løjer explained from the LEGO Group’s new Digital Hub in Copenhagen

“We had always suspected our raw materials supply would run out some day, which is why we have been aiming to develop fully sustainable bricks by 2030. Unfortunately, world geopolitics has overtaken the progress being made by our dedicated polymer research team.”

“Just as the COVID-19 pandemic saw us accelerate the rollout of our ‘Adults Welcome’ strategy, the looming energy crisis is seeing us fast track our new premium digital building experience, ‘LEGO Build Virtual.’”

“We have drawn on all of the currently available digital building experiences to develop one that will allow builders to be most productive, and Find Their Flow®. We have collated the data from literally millions of person years of digital building – across STUDIO, FORTNITE, Builders Journey, LEGO Worlds, and more to bring you the most optimized virtual build experience possible.”

A Brave New World

Starting this month, LEGO® Fans will have two options when purchasing sets: 

• If you possess the resources, you can purchase a physical LEGO set- although with the increasing price of raw materials, prices are set to skyrocket.
• The other option is to purchase the set as virtual bricks to build the set in LEGO Builder Virtual, a new premium digital build experience platform.

LEGO Builder Virtual will allow you to open your virtual bags of elements on a canvas, and construct the set with a cleaner interface than Studio “By removing all but the essential bricks from the workspace, and eliminating colour options, customers will be able to focus on the building experience, rather than unnecessary distractions”

When you open your virtual set, you can scatter the bricks across your virtual workspace, either one bag at a time or dump all the elements together for an exciting new challenge. Builders may opt to sort or knoll pieces manually before building.

Digital instructions from the LEGO Builder Virtual Plus app will be onscreen to guide your building experience, allowing 3D manipulation of elements, to help understand how they should behave..

As you build, bricks are rendered with TrueToPlay® realism. “We are particularly excited about image rendering. Based on the engine developed by the team at LIGHTROOM BRICK STUDIOS- developers of LEGO Builders Journey and LEGO Voyagers – the bricks are shown with accurate colours and transparency.”

As elements are handled more and more in the virtual build environment, they gain smudged fingerprints and fine scratches. 

A ’pristine build’ option simulates building the model wearing white cotton gloves, with the loss of fine control and haptic feedback you might expect, until you have racked up sufficient hours in this mode.

The more familiar, poorly colour matched elements featured in present software will be available for people unable to meet the ‘bleeding edge’ hardware requirements of the platform, ensuring that LEGO Building remains a luxury hobby.

An expert mode introduces the use of ‘brittle’ plastics across different colours and elements – allowing elements to shatter in an unpredictable fashion as they are placed or removed..

Pain Points Addressed to Improve the Consumer Experience

“We have listened to our fans and are addressing the pain points that have been raised repeatedly in recent years:”

These include:

• the rising cost of LEGO Sets, “By eliminating the costs of shipping, raw materials and packaging, users will essentially be paying the cost to design, market and negotiate third party licences required for each set”
• as well as a lack of space to display larger models them in.
• LEGO.com’s fulfillment time: while much improved on 10 years ago, it still can’t compete with Amazon. Having sets available to build within minutes of placing an order will be a massive forward step

“Virtual sets will still have a limited period of availability to purchase, and limited units available to buy in each market, thus collectability is maintained.

“We understand the importance of ‘offline play’ and once you have downloaded the virtual set and elements, you do not require an internet connection to build.” Virtual bricks are yours to keep forever after purchase, and will be added to your virtual brick box, which will be accessible for a sandbox ‘virtual MOC’ mode. However, the option will exist for you to transfer ownership of your virtual bricks to another user, facilitated by the new BricklinkVirtual Marketplace.” Of course, once you trade your virtual set or bricks, they are the property of the new owner, and removed from your play box.

The new enhanced Virtual Building Experience will be available to download from app stores by the end of April 1 2026. An Oculus Rift VR version is anticipated in time for the holiday season.

As the cost of petrochemical derived products is set to skyrocket worldwide, are you looking forward to the new digital building experience?

If you have read this far, and are still fearing the worst, please check the date of publication…

While I am based in Australia, I find these articles are taken too seriously if posted before midnight in the USA…

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Until Next Time,

Play Well!