[3], In 2019, he was named Person of the Year by British video game industry trade magazine MCV. [10], In early 1992, Sweeney found himself and his new-found video game company in a business where larger studios, such as Apogee Software and id Software, were dominant, and he had to find a more serious name for his. [7][8] It was only with the unexpected success of ZZT, caused in most part by the easy modifiability of the game using Sweeney's custom ZZT-oop programming language,[9] that made Sweeney consider turning Potomac Computer Systems into a video game company. Tencent in 2013 increased its stake in Kingsoft Network Technology, a subsidiary of Kingsoft Corporation, to 18%. [94][95] Epic acquired the Twinmotion visualization tool used in architectural design in May 2019 from Abvent, and which they plan to expand and incorporate into their Unreal Engine offerings. Mediatonic's Fall Guys, a major success during 2020, would remain available on Steam while Epic would help to bring it to additional platforms. [5] Sweeney established a consulting business, Potomac Computer Systems, out of his parents' home to offer help with computers, but it never took off and he shelved the company. However, both Epic and Life on Air claimed this was a smear campaign against its product and offered a US$1 million bounty for anyone able to substantiate their claim. Sweeney stated "There was an increasing realization that the old model wasn't working anymore and that the new model was looking increasingly like the way to go. In addition, the studio was instructed to recall and destroy all unsold retail copies of games built with Unreal Engine 3 code, including Too Human, X-Men Destiny, The Sandman, The Box/Ritualyst, and Siren in the Maelstrom (the latter three titles were projects never released, or even officially announced). [7][10] The final copy of ZZT was shipped by Paul Sweeney in November 2013. [66] To expand its esports initiatives, Epic Games hired Nate Nanzer from Blizzard Entertainment and their commissioner of the Overwatch League in May 2019. CARY – Just over a year after buying Rocket League owner Psyonix, Epic Games is going to make the esports community “free to play” later this summer. [92] Agog had developed SkookumScript, a platform for scripting events in video games; on announcement of this acquisition, Agog stated they will stop development of SkookumScript to work more on Unreal Engine scripting support. Epic Games was one of eleven companies selected to be part of the Disney Accelerator program in 2017, providing Epic equity investment and access to some of Disney's executives, and potential opportunity to work with Disney in the future. [1], Since the real estate bubble collapsed in 2008, Sweeney has used his fortune to purchase large tracts of land in North Carolina for conservation, becoming one of the largest private landowners in the state. In 1996, Epic MegaGames produced a shareware isometric shooter called Fire Fight, developed by Polish studio Chaos Works. [86][87] With the investment, Epic Games was estimated to have a nearly US$15 billion valuation in October 2018. Fortnite Battle Royale quickly gained an audience, amassing over 125 million players by May 2018 with estimates of having earned over US$1 billion by July 2018 through microtransactions, including its battle pass system. [4] Later, Sweeney had the idea of creating games that could be sold, programming them at night or over weekends outside college work. [72][73], Unreal Engine 5 was announced in mid-May 2020, with plans for a late-2021 release. He frequently visited his parents, who lived in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where his personal computer, used for both work and leisure, was situated. [11] Among them was the 17-year old Cliff Bleszinski, who joined the company after submitting his game Dare to Dream to Sweeney. These concerns have been connected to broader issues of general distrust of the Chinese government and Chinese corporations among some Western video game players. MacKenzie Bezos also entered the list for the first time, landing at the 15th spot. [97], In November 2019, Epic acquired Quixel, the world's largest photogrammetry asset library which makes 3D models of objects based on real-world high-definition photography. [7], After finishing his game ZZT, Sweeney opted to re-use the Potomac Computer Systems name to release the game to the public in January 1991. [48] Epic also released a remastered version of Shadow Complex for newer consoles and computers in 2015,[49][50] and their first foray into virtual reality with the release of Robo Recall for the Oculus Rift. Recognizing he needed a better name for a video game company, he renamed Potomac Computer Systems to Epic MegaGames. Tim Sweeney, The CEO Behind Fortnite, Makes Forbes List Of . [7] Some time this season, the company soon had 20 employees consisting of programmers, artists, designers and composers. [7] At the time, Sweeney was studying mechanical engineering and living in a dorm at the University of Maryland. Epic Games. Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. [4], Following ZZT, Sweeney started working on his next title, Jill of the Jungle, but found that he lacked the skills to complete this alone. 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1992", "Game Theory; For Game Maker, There's Gold in the Code", "Intel and Epic Games Launch '$1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest, "Gears of War 4 would have cost over $100M to make – and could have killed Epic Games", "Unreal Tournament 3 to blast in on November 23rd", "Epic believes People Can Fly, acquires majority stake", "Gears of War 2 sales hit 3 million mark", "Play With The Unreal Engine On Your iPhone With Epic Citadel", "Carbon Games formed by Fat Princess devs", "Big Huge Games members picked up for Epic Baltimore", "Epic Baltimore now Impossible Studios, working on Infinity Blade: Dungeons", "Epic Games is closing Impossible Studios, Infinity Blade Dungeons on hold", "Epic Games Closes Its Newest Studio, Impossible Games", "Chinese Internet company owns 40 percent of Epic Games", "Former Epic Games president Mike Capps parts ways with studio", "The fixer: Why Rod Fergusson returned to Gears of War", "Microsoft acquires Gears of War from Epic, hires series producer Rod Fergusson", "Epic Games Reveals Free, Crowdsourced Unreal Tournament", "New Unreal Tournament in development, and it'll be absolutely free", "Epic Games Teases New PC Shooter 'Paragon, "Shadow Complex Remastered announced for PS4, Xbox One, and PC", "Born out of Bullet Train, Epic's first commercial VR game is Robo Recall", "Why Epic Games is giving away its game technology", "People Can Fly returns, no longer owned by Epic Games", "Bulletstorm Remastered Edition Revealed, Release Date Announced", "Fortnite announces early access release, hands-on the unfinished game", "Fortnite Mania Fuels Epic Growth to $8.5 Billion", "Sony Is Finally Allowing Cross-Play On The PS4", "Epic Games has 250 million 'Fortnite' players and a lot of plans", "Fortnite is making so much money that Epic is giving Unreal Marketplace creators a big raise", "Epic Games is launching its own store, and taking a smaller cut than Steam", "After Fortnite's Massive Success, Epic Shuts Down Paragon", "Amid Fortnite's Success, New Unreal Tournament Stops Development At Epic Games", "Disney Accelerator 2017 Includes Investments in aXiomatic and EPIC Games", "Improbable snubs Unity, partners with Epic for $25M "open engine" fund", "Epic Breaks Down the 'Fortnite' World Cup $100 Million Prize Pool", "Overwatch League commissioner Nanzer to join Epic Games", "Epic Games announces $100m MegaGrants program, launches free Online Services tools", "Epic awards $1.2 million to Blender Foundation through Epic MegaGrants program", "Epic Games to receive BAFTA Special Award for contribution to game development", "HPA Engineering Excellence Award: Epic Games – Unreal Engine 4", "Epic will publish games from Remedy, Playdead and Gen Design", "Epic signs Playdead, Remedy, and genDesign to new publishing label", "Epic Games announces Unreal Engine 5 with first PS5 footage", "Fortnite Maker Epic Games Nears Funding at $17 Billion Value", "Sony invests $250 million in Fortnite maker Epic Games", "Sony Acquires Minority Stake in Epic for $250 Million", "Epic Games announces new headquarters at site of Cary Towne Center", "Epic Games' new MetaHuman Creator will let devs everywhere build high fidelity humans", "Epic Games Acquires Undertow Developer Chair", "Epic Snags Undertow Developer Chair Entertainment Group", "How Shadow Complex Was Inspired By Super Metroid (And Never Looked Back)", "Epic Games Gets $1.25 Billion Investment From KKR, Six Others", "Fortnite's Epic Games Gets $1.25 Billion From New Investor Group", "Fortnite Creator Epic Games Valued at Nearly $15 Billion", "Epic Games acquires cloud processing tech provider Cloudgine", "Epic Games acquires game security and anti-cheat firm Kamu", "Epic Games Acquires Anti-Cheat Company Kamu", "Epic Games buys scripting tool maker Agog Labs for Unreal Engine 4", "Epic Acquires Rocket League Developer Psyonix", "Epic buys Rocket League developer Psyonix, will stop selling the game on Steam", "Fortnite maker Epic Games buys video chat app Houseparty", "Epic Games acquires Quixel for world's largest bank of photogrammetry data", "Epic Games acquires facial animation tech studio Cubic Motion", "Epic Games acquires SuperAwesome to create a range of 'kid safe' services", "Epic has bought facial animation firm Hyprsense", "Epic Games is buying Fall Guys creator Mediatonic", "Epic Games acquires photogrammetry software developer Capturing Reality", "How Lucasfilm used Unreal Engine to make The Mandalorian", "Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes just 12% of revenue", "Epic Games launching Steam competitor with 88% revenue share for devs", "Epic expands European publishing operations with new Berlin office", "Epic Games forms Shanghai-based outsourcing division", "Former Star Wars: Rogue Squadron devs open new Epic Games studio", "Epic Games planning gala celebration to open Tokyo office", "Epic Games to establish new office in Australia and New Zealand", "Epic launches publishing label with Remedy, Playdead and GenDesign onboard", "Epic Seattle created for Unreal Engine 4 development", "Epic Games to launch new Seattle studio, hiring engineers for Unreal Engine 4", "$1 Billion Lincoln Square Expansion in Bellevue is Almost Fully Leased", "Computer games firm Epic takes offices in Newcastle city centre", "Epic Games closes Impossible Studios, delays Infinity Blade: Dungeons", "People Can Fly Turns Independent, Buys Bulletstorm IP", "Breaking: Silicon Knights Files Lawsuit Against Epic", "Mark Rein: Epic Games Did Nothing Wrong; Silicon Knights is Stealing", "Epic's Motion to Dismiss UE3 Case Denied", "Epic Says Epic Has Won Lawsuit Battle With Silicon Knights [UPDATE: Epic Awarded $4.45 Million]", "Epic judgment doubled, Silicon Knights ordered to pay over $9 million", "Silicon Knights, Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc", "Steam could be profitable with an 8% cut rather than 30%, says Tim Sweeney", "Fortnite for Android will ditch Google Play Store for Epic's website", "Epic gives in to Google and releases Fortnite on the Play Store", "Fortnite is coming to Android this summer", "Fortnite launches new payment system to cut Apple, Google out", "Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store", "Fortnite for Android has also been kicked off the Google Play Store", "Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says Apple fight is about 'basic freedoms of all consumers and developers, "Apple terminating Epic developer accounts, tools access", "Apple threatens to cut off Epic Games from iOS, Mac dev tools", "Epic judge will protect Unreal Engine — but not Fortnite", "Epic, Spotify, and others take on Apple with "Coalition for App Fairness, "The fury over the Epic Games Store, explained", "Houseparty offers $1m reward for proof of sabotage", "Has Houseparty Been Sabotaged? It was published by Electronic Arts. [142][143][144], On August 13, 2020, Epic Games updated Fortnite across all platforms, including the iOS and Android versions, to reduce the price of "V-Bucks" (the in-game currency) by 20% if they purchased directly from Epic. [9][7] Rein worked remotely from Toronto, and primarily handled sales, marketing and publishing deals; business development that Sweeney found to have significantly contributed to the company's growth. [105] Additionally in March, Epic acquired Capturing Reality, the developers of RealityCapture, a photogrammetry suite that can create 3D models from numerous photographs. The Company designs, produces, and retails high-end action games for consoles, personal computers, and mobile devices. [134] Additionally, the counter-suit claimed that Silicon Knights had "made unauthorized use of Epic's Licensed Technology" and had "infringed and otherwise violated Epic's intellectual property rights, including Epic's copyrighted works, trade secrets, know how and confidential information" by incorporating Unreal Engine 3 code into its own engine, the Silicon Knights Engine. He formed a team of four people to complete the game by mid-1992. Silicon Knights claimed that Epic not only missed this deadline, but that when a working version of the engine was eventually released, the documentation was insufficient. [7] As such, Sweeney came up with "Epic MegaGames", a name which incorporated "Epic" and "Mega" to make it sound like it represented a fairly large company (such as Apogee Software), although he was its only employee. [134] Furthermore, Epic asserted the Canadian developer broke the contract when it employed this derivative work in an internal title and a second game with Sega,[135] a partnership for which it never received a license fee. Moving their headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio's name was … [69], Epic Games was given the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Special Award in June 2019 for its past and continuing developments for the Unreal Engine,[70] a software which also earned it the Engineering Excellence Award from the Hollywood Professional Association. Epic plans to open Quixel's existing library of models to users of Unreal Engine, while the Quixel staff will continue to build out its assets within Epic. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epic_Games&oldid=1011575835, Entertainment Software Association members, Privately held companies based in North Carolina, Video game companies of the United States, Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz label identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 11 March 2021, at 17:12. [32] Epic Baltimore was renamed to Impossible Studios in August 2012. [74], On July 19, 2007, Canadian game studio Silicon Knights sued Epic Games for failure to "provide a working game engine", causing the Ontario-based game developer to "experience considerable losses". As a teenager, he made a good deal of money by offering to mow lawns of wealthy residents in the area for half the price of professional services. [141] When Epic brought Fortnite Battle Royale to mobile devices, the company initially offered a sideloaded package for Android systems to bypass the Google Play store, but eventually also made it a store app. Epic Games worked on an iOS game, Infinity Blade,[27] which was released on December 9, 2010. Epic Games makes, for instance, the Unreal Engine, a set of software tools used to build some of the world's biggest games (including "Fortnite," of course). Tim Sweeney is the founder and CEO of Epic Games, the Cary, NC-based company behind the “Fortnite” video game. [56] Following on the popularity of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a battle royale game released earlier in 2017, Epic developed a variant of Fortnite called Fortnite Battle Royale, which was released in September 2017 as a free-to-play title across computer, console, and mobile platforms. "[148] In comments on social media the next day, Sweeney said that they undertook the actions as "we're fighting for the freedom of people who bought smartphones to install apps from sources of their choosing, the freedom for creators of apps to distribute them as they choose, and the freedom of both groups to do business directly. [8][10], Wired magazine awarded him a Rave Award in 2007 for his work on Unreal Engine 3, the technology behind the blockbuster Gears of War. [33] However, the studio ended up closing its doors in February 2013. Differing from Valve's Steam storefront, which takes 30% of revenues (30/70 revenue-sharing agreement) from the sale of a game, the Epic Game Store will take 12%, as well as foregoing the 5% for games developed in the Unreal Engine, anticipating that these lower revenue-sharing agreements will draw developers to it. Epic Games Owner CRAZY POWER TRIP! Now, Sweeney’s Epic Games is one of the gaming industry’s hottest players, thanks to the massive success of “Fortnite,” which launched on PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One and Mac in 2017. Tfue PISSED About Apex Legends! [82], In 2008, Epic acquired Utah based Chair Entertainment, developer of Undertow. [21][37], Around this point, Epic had about 200 employees. Epic Games, which had been valued at around US$825 million at the time of Tencent's acquisition, was estimated to be worth US$4.5 billion in July 2018 due to Fortnite Battle Royale, and expected to surpass US$8.5 billion by the end of 2018 with projected growth of the game. 3Lateral is known for its "digital human" creations, using a combination of digital technology, motion capture, and other tools to create photo-realistic human subjects in real time. Epic Games is known for games such as ZZT developed by founder Tim Sweeney, various shareware titles including Jazz Jackrabbit and Epic Pinball, the Unreal video game series, which is used as a showcase for its Unreal Engine, the Gears of War series which is now owned by The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios, Infinity Blade, Shadow Complex, Bulletstorm, and Fortnite. Mark A. Rein is a Canadian entrepreneur and the vice president of video game and software development company Epic Games. The game guru who doesn't play games. This became the basis of ZZT. Following his first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who is the company's vice president to date. [2] However, Sweeney stated that Tencent otherwise has very little control on the creative output of Epic Games. [26], Epic Games released on September 1, 2010 Epic Citadel as a tech demo to demonstrate the Unreal Engine 3 running on Apple iOS, within Adobe Flash Player Stage3D and using HTML5 WebGL technologies. [63], The financial success of Fortnite brought additional investment into Epic Games. He let college friends and those around his neighborhood to provide feedback, and was aware it was something he could sell to other computer users. [34][35], Epic alongside People Can Fly made one last game in the Gears of War series that served as a prequel to the other games, Gears of War: Judgement, which was released in 2013. "[152] In September 2020, Epic Games, together with thirteen other companies, launched the Coalition for App Fairness, which aimed for better conditions for the inclusion of apps into app stores. Epic plans to integrate RealityCapture into the Unreal Engine.[106]. Alongside this announcement, Epic released its Epic Online Services, a free SDK toolset for online matchmaking and other similar cross-platform play support features based on Fortnite. [5] For continued development, Sweeney sought out a business partner for Epic MegaGames, eventually coming to Mark Rein, who had just been let go from id Software. [96] Epic acquired Life on Air, the developers behind Houseparty, a social networking service, in June 2019. [60] Epic launched the Epic Games Store digital storefront to compete with services like Steam and GOG.com, not only taking a 12% cut of revenue compared to the industry standard of 30%, but also eliminated the 5% cut for games using the Unreal engine sold via the storefront. [28] The third game in the series, Gears of War 3, came out in 2011. Alongside this, the label had announced three deals with developers Remedy Entertainment, Playdead and GenDesign in which Epic would fully fund development and publishing (including employee salaries, quality assurance, localization, and marketing) of one or more games from each studio, but leaving full creative control and IP rights to the studio, and sharing profits, following Epic's recouping of its investment, 50/50 with the studio.