The company launched the Make Something Unreal competition in 2004, aiming to reward video game developers who create mods using the Unreal game engine. 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, that made Sweeney consider turning Potomac Computer Systems into a video game company. Following the release of the popular Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017, the company gained additional investments that enabled it to expand its Unreal Engine offerings, establish esports events around Fortnite, and launch the Epic Games Store. Epic Games developed Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine which also powers its internally developed video games like Fortnite and the Unreal, Gears of War, and Infinity Blade series. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. Among the company’s business segments, second-quarter sales for aeronautics, which includes the F-35 fighter jet, rose 9.3% to $8.11 billion, besting the FactSet consensus of $7.61 billion. You may opt out of receiving STAT communications at any time. Your data will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Originally developed for the Unreal and Unreal Tournament game series, Unreal Engine has a complete feature set of graphical rendering, sound processing, and physics. In September 2023, Epic sold Bandcamp to music licensing company Songtradr. Epic Games acquired ArtStation, a professional artists' marketplace, in April 2021. Epic buying Tonic Games Group falls under the company's broader plans of creating its own metaverse. Epic acquired SuperAwesome, a firm that has developed services to support child-safe games and services around games, in September 2020, to incorporate these elements more into Epic's portfolio and to offer to other developers, particularly for games built around Epic's vision of metaverse games. 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. 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.
Epic opened a version of the store for Android devices worldwide and for iOS devices in Europe in January 2025 as a result of legal victories, one based on its suit against Google, and the second from the European Union's enforcement of remedies towards Apple under the Digital Markets Act. Epic also provides support to the Unreal marketplace, a digital storefront for creators to sell Unreal assets to other developers. Harmonix continued to support its existing games including Rock Band 4 and Fuser while building out Fortnite's musical experiences, adding a Fortnite Festival mode that mimics the note-matching gameplay of Rock Band in December 2023, and Epic's larger metaverse plans. In January 2021, Epic acquired RAD Game Tools, a company that makes a variety of middleware solutions for video game development which Epic plans to incorporate into the Unreal Engine. The company acquired Cubic Motion, a studio that casino gtspins provides highly detailed digital facial animations for both films and video games, in March 2020. Agog had developed SkookumScript, a platform for scripting events in video games; on the announcement of this acquisition, Agog stated it will stop the development of SkookumScript to work more on Unreal Engine scripting support.
These investments gave Kirkbi 3% ownership and increased Sony's to 4.9%. RealityScan allows users to create 3D models that can be imported into Sketchfab using photos taken by the user. Epic released the initial beta version of RealityScan, a mobile app that uses the tools from Capturing Reality and Quixel, in April 2022. Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder with these additional investments. The round of funding included another $200 million strategic investment from Sony. Epic announced a partnership with Cesium in March 2021 to bring its 3D geospatial data as a free add-on into the Unreal Engine. Epic purchased Cary Towne Center in Cary, North Carolina, in January 2021, which had been scheduled to be closed and demolished after 2020, to be its new headquarters and campus, with the conversion to be complete by 2024.
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The company also announced the acquisition of Kamu, a firm that offered anti-cheat software called Easy Anti-Cheat, in October 2018. In January 2018, it was announced that Epic had acquired Cloudgine, a developer of cloud-based gaming software. Besides expanding support for Fortnite and the Epic Games Store, these investments allowed Epic to acquire additional firms. In July 2024, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), an actor labor union of which numerous video game voice actors are members, would initiate a labor strike against a number of video publishers, including Epic Games, over concerns about lack of A.I. Epic received another $1 billion each from Sony and from Kirkbi, the parent company of The Lego Group, in April 2022 for continued support of building out Epic's metaverse. In April 2021, Epic completed another $1 billion round of funding to support the company's "long-term vision for the metaverse", putting the company's valuation at $28.7 billion. This included a $250 million investment from Sony, approximately a 1.4% stake in the company.
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Another set of questions focused on Epic’s use of its dominant market position, and leverage over its hospital customers, to block rival technology companies from getting access to patient data and information needed to support their businesses. Since the partial investment by the Chinese company Tencent, some consumers have become wary of Epic Games' reliability and use of their data, particularly in relationship with the Epic Games Store. They have released it as Lore to be an open-source version control system designed entirely around the large file needs of video game and multimedia projects. Epic Online Services is a free SDK based on Epic's Fortnite code that allows developers to implement cross-platform play features in their games, including matchmaking, friends lists, leaderboards, and achievements, with support for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android systems. As part of the acquisition, ArtStation members would gain access to Epic's tools and support such as the Unreal Engine, while the ArtStation marketplace will reduce its take on purchases from 30% to 12%. Around 2006, the personal computer video game market was struggling with copyright infringement in the form of software piracy, and it became difficult to make single-player games, elements that had been part of Epic's business model to that point.
Across July and August, Epic raised an additional $1.78 billion in capital investment, bringing the company's post-money equity valuation to $17.3 billion. 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. 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 a potential opportunity to work with Disney in the future. However the company also refocused its development efforts to provide more support for Unreal and Fortnite by ending support for Paragon and Unreal Tournament. The investment infusion from Tencent allowed Epic Games to relicense the Unreal Engine 4 engine in March 2015 to be free for all users to develop with, with Epic taking 5% royalties on games developed with the engine. Epic recognized the troubles of being held to the business objectives of a publisher and began to shift the company again. Additionally, they had suggested the idea of a multiplayer-only version of Gears of War that featured improved versions of maps based on user feedback, similar to the concept behind Unreal Tournament, but Microsoft rejected this idea.