Mozilla announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with Epic Games once again, to bring the Unreal Engine 4 to the web in time for the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Calif., next week, according to an article in Venture Beat. Epic Games are the makers of widely-used gaming middleware.

Games on the web have been second-class since their inception, as gamers go for mobile games; and Mozilla has a chance to change that.

Mozilla collaborated with Epic last year and ported Unreal Engine 3 to the Internet, but it was demonstrated only as a proof of concept. This year, the technology is set in place and available. Developers can already use and start building on them.

This is important, because surveys show 52 percent of Americans play games on the web. Many have shifted to the web from native mobile or desktop software.

There is likewise a high demand for portable gaming, the technology where games can be accessed via browser. It is more portable since it works on all platforms, regardless of device used. These games are increasing in scope and size.

Vlad Vukicevic, engineering director and inventor of Mozilla WebGL, on a call with VentureBeat shared that the firm is working on setting the Web for next generation games, especially making sure that browser experience matches that of native games.

A JavaScript low-level subset called asm.js is developed by Mozilla, focused on performance and speed. It brought web-based performance very close to the native software performance, which is a key attribute in bringing web-gaming closer to native experience.

The Unreal Engine of Epic Games powers some big franchises in the games industry such as living room-based first-person shooter BioShock Infinite as well as Infinity Blade on mobile, an action role-playing game.