Software:Fortnite: Save the World

Short description: Co-op sandbox survival game developed by Epic Games

Fortnite: Save the World
Developer(s)	Epic Games
Publisher(s)	Epic Games
Director(s)	Darren Sugg
Artist(s)	Pete Ellis
Composer(s)	Rom Di Prisco
Series	Fortnite
Engine	Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s)	macOS PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	June 29, 2020
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter, survival, tower defense
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Fortnite: Save the World is a looter shooter survival video game produced by Epic Games, part of the game Fortnite. It is a cooperative and sandbox-style game with elements of tower defense and played in hybrid-third-person, described by Epic as a cross between Minecraft and Left 4 Dead. The game was initially released as a paid-for early access title for macOS, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on July 25, 2017, with plans for a full free-to-play release announced in late 2018. Epic eventually opted to move the game to pay-to-play in June 2020. The retail versions of the game were published by Gearbox Software, while online distribution of the PC versions is handled by Epic's launcher.

Fortnite is set on contemporary Earth, where the sudden appearance of a worldwide storm causes 98% of the world's population to disappear, and zombie-like creatures rise to attack the remainder. Considered by Epic as a cross between Minecraft and Left 4 Dead, Fortnite has up to four players cooperating on various missions on different maps to collect resources, build fortifications around defensive objectives that are meant to help fight the storm and protect survivors, and construct weapons and traps to engage in combat with waves of these creatures that attempt to destroy the objectives. Players gain rewards through these missions to improve their hero characters, support teams, and arsenal of weapon and trap schematics to be able to take on more difficult missions.

The game was initially supported through microtransactions to purchase in-game loot boxes that could be used towards these upgrades. A standalone battle royale game version, Fortnite Battle Royale, was released for the same platforms in September 2017. In association with this change, Epic dropped the use of loot boxes, instead opting for direct purchase of cosmetics through the in-game currency known as V-Bucks. Following the release, the player-versus-environment mode was officially distinguished as "Save the World".

Synopsis

One day, 98% of Earth's human population suddenly disappeared, and the remaining humans found the skies covered in dense clouds, creating chaotic storms that dropped husks: humanoid zombie-like creatures that attacked the living. The survivors found ways to construct "storm shields", a field that cleared the storm clouds from immediately overhead and reduced the attacks from husks, and used these to set up survivor bases across the globe. The player is a commander of one of these bases, charged with going out of the storm shield to find resources, survivors, and other allies to help expand their storm shield and find a way to return Earth to its normal state.

Gameplay

The "tower defense" aspect of the game revolves around the player character defending the storm shield against zombie like creatures.

Fortnite: Save the World is described as a unique blend of sandbox survival co-op lite RPG tower defense game, and is an amalgamation of player progression, exploration, scavenging items, sharing scarce resources, crafting weapons, building fortified structures, and fighting waves of encroaching monsters. Tim Sweeney, Epic Games' founder, described the game as "Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead".

The game plays in a third-person perspective. Up to four players cooperate in various missions to collect resources, build fortifications around defensive objectives that are meant to help fight the storm and protect survivors, and construct weapons and traps to engage in combat with waves of these creatures that attempt to destroy the objectives. Players gain rewards through these missions to improve their hero characters, support teams, and arsenal of weapon and trap schematics to be able to take on more difficult missions.

Quests and events

Players can review their current story progress and quests, which can include daily, weekly, side, challenge and event quests, which when completed provide in-game currency or resources.

Fortnite: Save the World offers themed-events with a unique progression line, new locations, and rewards based on those themes. The first such event was its Halloween event, "Fortnitemares", that offered Halloween-themed heroes, characters, weapons, and traps (usable outside of the event) by completing numerous objectives.

Map and missions

Missions are divided between four world locations, some available only after progressing far enough in the story, and special locations for timed events and for the Survive the Storm mode. Within a location are several possible mission areas that show the type of mission, the terrain it takes place on, its difficulty rating relative to the player's current power level, and whether the mission is currently under special "storm" conditions that throw random effects, like buffed husks or mini-bosses, into the mission but have potentially better rewards if completed. The player can select a special "play with others" option that automatically matches them with players at a similar power level and story progression on a random mission for added rewards.

During missions, players can make their fortifications from one of three base materials (wood, brick, and metal), and in a number of configurations, including floors/ceilings, walls, stairs, and ramps; players have the ability to edit these for more configurations, such as adding a door or window to a wall. Each fortification part can be upgraded with more resources of the same type to improve their durability, and when they are damaged, can be repaired by spending additional resources. Traps, which have a limited number of activation before they fall apart, can be placed on floors, walls, and ceilings, and arranged in means to make them more lethal or effective against husks. Traps may also include beneficial resources for players, such as healing pads, defender posts, and launch pads. Similarly, players can use a range of weapons, but these have limited durability that deplete as they are used or as a penalty if the player should be downed by husks and need to respawn without the help of allies. Players can construct new weapons, ammo, and traps from gathered resources, or find these from searching containers across the map. During missions, the game progresses through an accelerated day-night cycle; during the day, the husks are more passive and do not generally pose immediate threats, while during the night, bands of husks may spawn in and will aggressively seek out players.

Most missions take place on procedurally-generated landscapes. Most missions are based on locating sites representing the objectives on the map, build up fortifications around those locations, and then face off against several waves of husks that will try to destroy the objectives. During completion of these missions, players are generally given a "storm forecast" to know where husks will spawn in as to enhance fortification in that direction, though this direction can change in more difficult missions. Other missions are time-limited, requiring the players to locate and help a number of survivors, build out several radar towers, or clear out various encampment of husks scattered around the map before time runs out. These missions encourage the players to explore the map and farm for resources (either by searching objects or destroying them with an axe) used to build the fortifications, weapons, ammunition, and traps needed to defend or attack the husks. Players also frequently need to seek out bluglo, a special resource that does not carry over between maps to activate certain mission objectives. Some missions are considered a loss if the objective is destroyed or time runs out, while other missions allow the players to rework their fortifications and start their defense again if the objective is destroyed. Maps will frequently have optional objectives that are discovered through exploration, such as human survivors that need help. Completing these successfully earn immediate in-game rewards such as resources, weapons, and traps. Missions themselves may provide bonus objectives, such as by completing the mission within a certain in-game period, using a limited number of fortification pieces, or saving more survivors than the minimum necessary, which affects the qualify of rewards the players receive after the successful completion of the main mission.

One unique mission type is Storm Shield Defense (SSD) missions. In each of the four world locations, the player is allocated a map that remains persistent, representing the site where their base's storm shield generator is placed, and in the storm mode, the player must return to this map to expand the storm shield, requiring them to add a new objective to defend successfully to continue the story. At any time, the player can enter this map without starting the defense mission, and use their carried-over resources to build out the fortification and traps, or add resources to a special storage area for this map. Successfully completing SSD-missions unlocks "Endurance Mode" which allows players to test theirs skills and builds against an increasingly difficult and unending siege on their base.

Command and armory

The player has a roster of hero characters, defender characters, and support characters (called Survivors). Hero characters represent characters from one of four classes that the player can use while on a mission, as well as used to undertake resource-gathering missions making them unavailable to use until they return from the mission. Defender characters can be summoned to help with defense but only if there are less than four players on a mission. Support characters (called "Survivors", who must be rescued ingame) are used to form various non-playable squads that provide passive bonuses to the player's attack strength, building speed, armor, and health, with additional benefits if the player can match certain characterization attributes within a squad.

The player can spend commander upgrade skill points, earned by completing missions, and technology research points, earned over time, to unlock new base support skills, gadgets and tools. These can improve a player's base attributes, attributes that are shared with the other players while on missions, unlock higher levels of evolution for schematics and characters, open up new squad positions, or unlock general skills that players can use in the field. Collectively, the player's progress on the commander rating, their survivor squad composition, and their selected hero character make up the player's current "power level" which relates to what difficulty of missions the player should take and the game's matchmaking services.

The player has an itemization inventory of weapon and trap schematics, along with collected resources. The crafting schematics are used to construct weapons and traps when on the field. The player can spend different types of experience points and resources earned as mission rewards to level up and evolve schematics and characters. For weapons and traps, this generally boosts their effectiveness as well as unlocking additional attribute "perk" bonuses, while leveling up hero characters will increase stats and unlock special skills the character has while in the field. Schematics and characters are generally assigned a rarity, which determines how much they can be leveled and evolved. A player's inventory of schematics and characters is limited, but players can opt to slot anyone they do not need into a collection book to gain rewards when certain collection sets are completed; use one or more of these schematics or characters to transform them into a new random item, or simply retire them to gain back experience points and other resources to free up the inventory slots.

Locker, store and item shop

The player has access to a complete gallery of all Fortnite cosmetic items across all gameplay modes, featuring outfits, back bling, and harvesting tools. The player can spend real-world currency and/or different types of in-game currency, experience points and resources earned as mission rewards, from loot boxes (represented as llama piñatas), or other resources to level up and evolve schematics and characters.

Heroes in the player's locker have different power levels and abilities which can be increased either by upgrading them or by enhancing their support team with Survivor XP or Hero XP. The upgrades, however, are locked until certain quests are completed, such as the Storm Shield Defense missions. Heroes also come in different rarities, but unlike the Battle Royale counterpart, the rarity of a hero can be upgraded further using Hero XP and other account resources such as Epic or Legendary Flux that can be obtained either from the weekly shop, or by completing some missions.

Although most cosmetics earned in Fortnite Battle Royale can be used in Fortnite: Save the World, there are some that cannot. These include all gliders, all contrails, and some backblings. Reactivity for some backblings may not work in Save the World either. Epic Games has sparked some controversy among players when a Save the World exclusive hero (Metal Team Leader) was made available in the Fortnite Battle Royale item shop as a skin. Some players felt ripped off by Epic Games' decision as they've already purchased the item in Save the World which was taunted to be rare.

Development

History

Conception

Fortnite was revealed at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards (VGA), with Epic's former design director Cliff Bleszinski introducing a trailer for the game. Donald Mustard, creative lead at Epic, said in 2017 that this announcement was "three weeks after we came up with the idea, before we even made the game". The title, which started out as an internal game jam project following the completion of Gears of War 3, represents a departure from the company's previous work. As Bleszinski explained during the Spike event, Epic wanted to "switch things up a little bit and do something different and fun" with Fortnite, describing it as "a world where you explore, you scavenge, you build and ultimately you survive." In an interview with Engadget, he also echoed these statements, claiming that the game would be different from the Gears of War series: "There's no dudebros in it...Not that there's anything wrong with that, right? But creatively for the team, Gears has been amazing for us. But it's fun to kind of stretch our wings and do something that's a little different from the usual." At the time of its creation, producer Roger Collum said that the game grew out of taking two popular genres: building games like Minecraft and Terraria, and shooting games like Gears of War, to make something novel, comparing it to making peanut butter cups out of peanut butter and chocolate. When they showed this approach to other developers, they found that the concept was an idea that others had had but never worked towards any final product, and from that knew they had something with potential to build on.

As the game was at its very preliminary stages at the VGA reveal, the goal of this reveal was to seek public interest in the title and potential publishing partners as to decide on the game's release platforms and timeframe. During the July 2012 San Diego Comic Con, Epic announced that Fortnite would be an exclusive personal computer title, and the first one to be developed by Epic using their new Unreal 4 game engine, with a planned release in 2013. The game's development was originally started in the Unreal 3 engine, but as they progressed, they had seen the opportunity to work in several of the new feature sets and scripting language offered by Unreal 4 for Fortnite, while still running on most personal computers at that time. They further opted for personal computer exclusivity to avoid the difficulty of having to go through console certification, and as they planned to be constantly monitoring and tweaking the game, acting as a dungeon master, the personal computer approach would allow them to do this without restrictions normally set by console manufacturers. Bleszinski later clarified that they would not rule out release on other platforms as they developed the title.

Fortnite cosplayers at Gamescom 2017

Fortnite's development was spread among several of Epic's satellite studios, and was also co-developed by the Polish studio People Can Fly, which had worked with Epic previously on earlier games, and had been fully acquired by Epic sometime in 2012. People Can Fly were briefly renamed Epic Games Poland in 2013 as to align with Epic's other studios. By March 2014, there were about 90 developers working on the game. People Can Fly later returned to being an independent studio and their own name in 2015, but continued to help Epic with Fortnite's development.

Transition under Tencent

Fortnite's early development hit a number of roadblocks. First, Epic began using Fortnite as the testing ground for the new Unreal Engine 4, which slowed some development. A further factor was recognizing that to maintain interest in the game, it needed to have deep systems for player progression and itemization, similar to computer role-playing games. They reached out and brought in system designers from popular massively multiplayer online games, including Darren Sugg, to gain input on how to create these types of systems. A culminating issue in the slowdown was the investment from Tencent in Epic Games in 2012, which transitioned a number of high-level executives, including Bleszinski, out of the company. Epic had recognized they needed to prepare for offering games that followed the games as a service model. Tencent had excelled at this in China, and agreed to help Epic in exchange for significant ownership in Epic. Epic chose to use Fortnite as the spearhead for Epic's games-as-a-service model which created additional hurdles, according to Mustard. Further, with the transition of executives, new leadership was needed to take over for Fortnite's development team. Sugg, for example, had been discussing the various game systems in depth with Bleszinski, who otherwise was leading the design. With Bleszinski's departure, Sugg had to take over as lead design to try to continue the vision that Bleszinski's team had. Rod Fergusson, who had left Epic after Tencent's investment in 2012, stated that if he had stayed on with Epic, he would likely have cancelled Fortnite by this point.

At the same time, Epic made several decisions on gameplay which established the basis of Fortnite. Initially when players placed walls and other fortifications, they would have had players complete a mini-game to complete the construction. They found that the game was more successful when these fortifications built themselves, allowing players to create forts quickly, and kept this approach. They were also able to bring in various game modes that had been envisioned in Gears of War 3, but which then were limited by the game's engine. The dynamic nature of the game world due to players' fortifications and de-construction required them to come up with an artificial intelligence pathfinding solution for the enemies. Epic considered they were trying to build a toolkit for players to interact with as to create emergent gameplay solutions based on the situation of the missions, from which they can continue to expand upon with new items throughout the life of the game.

By November 2013, Epic confirmed that Fortnite would not release that year, nor offered a target released date, though affirmed the game was still in development by several of its studios. Epic Games Vice President of Publishing Mike Fischer said in 2015 that Epic recognized that they "announced this game too soon", and that its lengthy development period was due to "very good reasons." Fortnite was a feature in the May 2014 issue of Game Informer, revealing that the title would be released as a free-to-play game.

By 2014, Fortnite was at a "pretty functional prototype" with most of the Unreal 4 engine elements smoothed out, according to Mustard. Epic anticipated it would still take about three more years to complete, not only in polishing and balancing the game, but setting in place the necessary backend elements for the games-as-a-service model. To help support development and get player feedback, Epic used a series of closed alpha test periods. The game's first closed alpha, called Online Test 1, ran from December 2 to 19, 2014, while Online Test 2 ran from March 24 to April 14, 2015. Epic said the first alpha was designed to help it "make sure all of our basic systems are working" and establish "a baseline for how people play in order to make Fortnite better." After being demoed at WWDC 2015 on Mac, Fortnite entered closed beta testing in the fall of 2015. Approximately 50,000 players participated in these periods.

Fortnite was being developed alongside Paragon, which Epic announced in November 2015. As Paragon seemed to take Epic's focus, leaving little news about Fortnite, CEO Tim Sweeney said in March 2016 that they were still committed to Fortnite once Paragon was launched and established, given that much of the work on Fortnite would take time to get the right balance for gameplay. "We figure we should start with one major successful launch and do one at a time. Fortnite will be next."

Early access release and Battle Royale spinoff

By June 2017, Epic Games announced that Fortnite was now set for a 2018 release across Windows, macOS, and the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. Leading up to this free-to-play release, the game was offered as a paid early access period starting on July 25, 2017, for all platforms; players who pre-ordered Founder's Packs were granted access to the game on July 21. The lengthy period since the game's alpha phases was ascribed to developing Fortnite as a games-as-a-service model, according to creative lead Donald Mustard. While the game had been in a playable state for the two years before this, Epic wanted to be able to develop ongoing content to players to keep them interested in the title, such as planning timed events with unique rewards, following the approach used by games like League of Legends and Warframe. Since the game had already been announced earlier in 2014 through Game Informer, Epic opted not to use their Electronic Entertainment Expo time or space in June 2017 to re-announce the game, fearing that coverage of it would be lost in the deluge of other gaming news coming out of the event. Instead, the Epic marketing team worked with Twitch and other game streamers to provide them early copies of the game to play and promote on their channels in the weeks leading up to their target release date of July 25, 2017. However, a few weeks before this date, Epic recognized that the game was still not ready for release; it was playable but not content complete. Rather than prolonging it further, Epic decided to release the game into paid early access on July 25, 2017, which would also allow them to get active feedback on the game as they progressed in development. At the time of the start of early access, Gearbox Software helped distribute the game on physical media.

With the popularity of Fortnite Battle Royale, which was first released in early access around September 2017 and gained considerable attention by early 2018, Epic split off a separate development team to focus on improvements for this mode. Epic said that their attention to Fortnite was causing some of their other games to see lower player populations, leading them to reduce development efforts on these games, particularly Paragon. By the end of January 2018, Epic announced it was shutting down Paragon by April of that year, providing refunds to all players. Players on a Fortnite-dedicated Reddit forum had expressed concerns that a similar fate could befall the Save the World mode of Fortnite, as externally, the Save the World mode has not received the same attention in providing updates and improvements compared to the Battle Royale mode since that mode's release. Epic's Ed Zobrist said that as of March 2018 that the retention rates for "Save the World" have been high, and have grown since the release of Fortnite Battle Royale, and the company has since improved communications with the player base, such as providing development road maps and known bug lists.

In October 2018, Epic announced that the game's free-to-play release would not happen until at least 2019, which was done in order to make sure that it would ready to accommodate large groups of new players. A significant patch for the game to be released in November 2018 aims to rework much of the game's metagame interfaces, providing some automation and helpful advice through newly introduced characters for hero outfitting, survivor squads, and other activities. A change in its loot box system was made in January 2019, which allowed players to know what items they would get from the "loot llamas" purchased via the in-game store, similar to an x-ray; contents of such loot llamas will be randomized on a daily basis.

Final release

On June 29, 2020, Epic announced that they had decided to end Save the World's early access period and make it a full release, but at the same time abandoning the original free-to-play plans and keeping the game a premium title. With this change, they were no longer able to continue to support common shared items between the Save the World and Battle Royale modes of Fortnite. With this, Epic planned to include Ventures, season-long events to give players new challenges in the Save the World mode alongside recurring annual events. Long-term players of the Save the World mode criticized Epic for this change; they had long seen the mode receive less care than Fortnite Battle Royale with many features that had been planned now dropped, and that the game's campaign that was to have had taken place over four major acts was effectively only 75% complete and appeared to be no longer a priority. A campaign hashtag "#SaveSaveTheWorld" grew among both these players as well as sympathetic Fortnite Battle Royale players to try to convince Epic to put more development resources into this mode.

Art and design

In their initial prototypes of the game, Epic had used creepier and darker designs for the husks and other enemies, and many of the elements of the settings were assets pulled from both Gears of War and Unreal series, which further created a dark, depressing environment. Bleszinski said that they found this to create an "exhaustive environment" that was too grim, and designed to take the design in a more cartoonish approach, while still remaining creepy, so that players would enjoy spending time in the game's world, without competing with games like DayZ. They used works from Pixar, Tim Burton, and Looney Tunes as inspiration for the designs.

Fortnite uses procedural generation to build out the maps for each mission. The game also includes an "AI director" that monitors how players are progressing, and alters the challenges of the monsters it sends out to the players based on that progression, easing off if players are having greater difficulty in surviving. At one point, the game had a team-based player versus player mode, where each side attempted to build up a base around a central target while trying to attack the opponent's target after breaking through their base. This did not make it into the final game.

Epic has cross-platform play between PC and PS4 and has stated plans to allow separate Fortnite cross-platform support for Xbox One and personal computer users, but cross-platform play between all three platforms has not been announced. However, for a few hours during one day in September 2017, players found they could cross-play between all three platforms. Epic later corrected this, calling it a "configuration error".

Reception

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic PC: 81/100 PS4: 78/100 XONE: 85/100 Review scores Publication Score PC Gamer (US) 55/100 Polygon 7.5/10

Sales

On July 26, 2017, it was announced that Fortnite had sold over 500,000 digital pre-order copies. On August 18, 2017, Epic confirmed that Fortnite had surpassed over a million players.

Legal issues

Following the addition of x-ray loot boxes in February 2019, Epic Games was the subject of a class-action lawsuit claiming that its former model for loot boxes was predatory because they did not report the odds which rare items would appear in these boxes. Epic offered to settle the case in February 2021, in addition to retaining about $26 million to substantiated claims from members of the class particularly to minors affected by the case, by also crediting all players of Save the World with 1,000 V-bucks (about $8 equivalent), with Epic's lawyers stating "it’s the right thing to do and we feel strongly about random item loot boxes".

External links

• Official website

Short description: American video game company

Epic Games, Inc.

Headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, 2016
Formerly	Potomac Computer Systems (1991–1992) Epic MegaGames, Inc. (1992–1999)
Type	Private
Industry	Video games
Founded	1991 (1991) in Potomac, Maryland, US
Founder	Tim Sweeney
Headquarters	Cary, North Carolina , US
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Tim Sweeney (CEO) Kim Libreri (CTO) Mark Rein (VP) Adam Sussman (president) Charlie Wen (CCO)
Products	Unreal Engine Bink Video Epic Games Store Unreal series Gears of War series Fortnite
Owners	Tim Sweeney (51.4%) Tencent (40%) Sony (5.4%) Kirkbi A/S (3.2%)
Number of employees	4,000+ (2023)
Subsidiaries	See § Subsidiaries and divisions
Website	epicgames.com
Footnotes / references

Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. 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. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games.

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. In 2014, Unreal Engine was named the "most successful videogame engine" by Guinness World Records.

Epic Games owns the game developers Psyonix, Mediatonic, and Harmonix, and operates studios in multiple locations around the world. While Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder, Tencent acquired a 48.4% outstanding stake, equating to 40% of total Epic, in the company in 2012, as part of an agreement aimed at moving Epic towards a games as a service model. 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. As of April 2022, the company has a US$32 billion equity valuation.

On August 13, 2020, Epic released a version of Fortnite that included a permanent discount on V-bucks across all platforms (except iOS and Android devices) if they purchased directly through Epic, bypassing Apple and Google's storefronts. Both Apple and Google immediately delisted the game for violating the storefronts' terms of service by including their own storefront, which led Epic to file lawsuits against both companies the same day, accusing them of antitrust behavior in how they operate their app stores. While Apple was ultimately victorious in a bench trial in September 2021 and upheld through appeals, Google's actions were found to be monopolistic by a jury trial in December 2023.

History

Potomac Computer Systems (1991–1992)

Potomac Computer Systems was founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991. At the time, Sweeney was studying mechanical engineering and living in a dorm at the University of Maryland. He frequently visited his parents, who lived in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where his personal computer, used for both work and leisure, was situated. Out of this location, Sweeney started Potomac Computer Systems as a computer consulting business but later figured that it would be too much work he would have to put into keeping the business stable, and scrapped the idea.

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. 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. ZZT was sold through bulletin board systems, while all orders were fulfilled by Sweeney's father, Paul Sweeney. The game sold several thousand copies as of May 2009, and Paul Sweeney still lived at the former Potomac Computer Systems address at the time, fulfilling all orders that eventually came by mail. The final copy of ZZT was shipped by Paul Sweeney in November 2013.

Epic MegaGames (1992–1999)

Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney

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. 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. Sweeney soon underwent searching for a business partner, and eventually caught up with Mark Rein, who previously quit his job at id Software and moved to Toronto, Ontario. 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. Some time this season, the company soon had 20 employees consisting of programmers, artists, designers and composers. Among them was the 17-year old Cliff Bleszinski, who joined the company after submitting his game Dare to Dream to Sweeney. The following year, they had over 30 employees.

In 1996, Epic MegaGames produced a shareware isometric shooter called Fire Fight, developed by Polish studio Chaos Works. It was published by Electronic Arts. By 1997, Epic MegaGames had 50 people working for them worldwide. In 1998, Epic MegaGames released Unreal, a 3D first-person shooter co-developed with Digital Extremes, which expanded into a series of Unreal games. The company also began to license the core technology, the Unreal Engine, to other game developers.

Epic Games (1999–present)

Unreal and personal computer games (1999–2006)

In February 1999, Epic MegaGames announced that they had moved their headquarters to a new location in Cary, North Carolina, and would henceforth be known as simply Epic Games. Rein explained that "Unreal was first created by developers who were scattered across the world, eventually, the team came together to finish the game and that's when the real magic started. The move to North Carolina centralizes Epic, bringing all of the company's talented developers under one roof." Furthermore, Sweeney stated that the "Mega" part of the name was dropped because they no longer wanted to pretend to be a big company, as was the original intention of the name when it was a one-man team. The follow-up game, Unreal Tournament, shipped to critical acclaim the same year, at which point the studio had 13 employees.

The company launched the Make Something Unreal competition in 2004, aiming to reward video game developers who create mods using the Unreal game engine. Tripwire Interactive won US$80,000 in cash and computer hardware prizes over the course of the contest in the first contest in 2004.

Gears of War and console games (2006–2012)

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. The company decided to shift focus into developing console systems, a move which Sweeney called the start of the third major iteration of the company, "Epic 3.0". In 2006, Epic released the Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War, which became a commercial success for the company, grossing about $100 million off a $12 million budget. A year later, the company released Unreal Tournament 3 for PC and acquired a majority share in People Can Fly.

In 2008, Epic Games released Gears of War 2, selling over three million copies within the first month of its release.

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. It was also released for Android on January 29, 2013. Epic Games worked on an iOS game, Infinity Blade, which was released on December 9, 2010. The third game in the series, Gears of War 3, came out in 2011.

In 2011, Epic's subsidiary Titan Studios was dissolved. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Epic Games announced their new game Fortnite.

In June 2012, Epic announced that it was opening up a new studio, Epic Baltimore, made up of members of 38 Studios' Big Huge Games. Epic Baltimore was renamed to Impossible Studios in August 2012. However, the studio ended up closing its doors in February 2013.

Epic fully acquired People Can Fly in August 2012, rebranding them as Epic Games Poland in November 2013 as they began work on Fortnite alongside Epic. 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. At this point, Epic had considered developing a fourth main title for Gears of War, but estimated that its budget would be at least $100 million. 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. Epic recognized the troubles of being held to the business objectives of a publisher and began to shift the company again.

Games as a service and Tencent shareholding (2012–2018)

File:GitHub OctoTales - Epic Games.webm Coupled with their desire to move away from being beholden to a publisher, Epic Games observed that the video game industry was shifting to a games-as-a-service model (GaaS). 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 an attempt to gain more GaaS experience, they made an agreement with Chinese Tencent, who had several games under their banner (including Riot Games' League of Legends) operating successfully as games as a service. In exchange for Tencent's help, Tencent acquired approximately 48.4% of Epic then issued share capital, equating to 40% of total Epic – inclusive of both stock and employee stock options, for $330 million in June 2012. Tencent Holdings has the right to nominate directors to the board of Epic Games and thus counts as an associate of the Group. However, Sweeney stated that Tencent otherwise has very little control on the creative output of Epic Games. Sweeney considered the partial acquisition by Tencent as the start of "Epic 4.0", the fourth major iteration of the company, allowing the company to be more agile in the video game marketplace.

Around this point, Epic had about 200 employees. A number of high-profile staff left the company months after the Tencent deal was announced for various reasons. Some notable departures included:

• Cliff Bleszinski, then the design director, announced he was leaving Epic Games in October 2012 after 20 years with the company. His official reason was "It's time for a much-needed break". Bleszinski later stated that he had become "jaded" about the gaming industry in the lead-up to Tencent's involvement. After Tencent's investment, Bleszinski attempted to renegotiate his contract but failed to come to terms, making him think about retirement instead. He opted to stop coming to work, spending his time at his beach house, eventually leading Sweeney to come down and have a heart-to-heart discussion with Bleszinski on the new direction Epic was going, and asking him to make a firm decision regarding his commitment to Epic. Bleszinski opted to write his resignation letter the next day. After about two years, Bleszinski started Boss Key Productions in 2014.
• President Mike Capps announced his retirement in December 2012, and cited as reasons the birth of a baby boy he was having with his wife and his plans to be a stay-at-home dad. He subsequently announced quitting his advisory role as well as his affiliation with the company in March 2013.
• Rod Fergusson, who had been a lead developer for the Gears of War series, left Epic in August 2012. Fergusson stated that he had seen the direction that the Tencent acquisition would have taken the company, and was not interested in the free-to-play style of games but instead wanted to continue developing a "AAA, big-narrative, big-story, big-impact game". Fergusson briefly joined Irrational Games, owned by 2K Games, to help complete BioShock Infinite. While there, Fergusson talked with 2K about potentially continuing the Gears of War series, leading to talks between 2K Games, Epic, and Microsoft. As a result, Microsoft acquired the rights to Gears of War on January 27, 2014, eventually assigned those to Microsoft Game Studios; Fergusson moved to Black Tusk Studios, owned by Microsoft Game Studios, to take on lead development for a new Gears title, with the studio being rebranded as The Coalition. The first game since the acquisition, Gears of War 4, was released in October 2016.
• Adrian Chmielarz, the founder of People Can Fly, who joined Epic when his studio was acquired earlier in 2012, decided to leave after Tencent's acquisition, stating that he and other former People Can Fly members did not believe the free-to-play games as a service direction fit their own personal vision or direction they wanted to go. Chmielarz and these others left Epic in late 2012 to form The Astronauts.
• Lee Perry, a lead designer on both Unreal and Gears of War series, felt that Epic has started to grow too large to maintain a role as an eccentric game developer. Coupled with the studio's need for more management to support the games as a service model, Perry felt that their creative freedom would become limited. He and five other senior people left Epic to form a new studio, Bitmonster.

Epic continued its goal to deliver games as a service following these departures. Fortnite was to serve as their testbed for living games, but with the shifts in staff, and its engine from Unreal Engine 3 to 4, its release suffered some setbacks. Epic started additional projects; the free-to-play and community-developed Unreal Tournament, first announced in 2014, and the free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena game Paragon, launched in 2016 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. Epic also released a remastered version of Shadow Complex for newer consoles and computers in 2015, and their first foray into virtual reality with the release of Robo Recall for the Oculus Rift.

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.

In June 2015, Epic agreed to allow Epic Games Poland's departure from the company and sold its shares in the studio; the studio reverted to their former name, People Can Fly. The Bulletstorm IP was retained by People Can Fly who has since launched a remastered version called Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition on April 7, 2017, published by Gearbox Software.

Fortnite success (2018–present)

Epic's Fortnite exhibition space at E3 2018

By July 2017, Fortnite was finally in a state for public play. Epic launched the title through a paid early access then, with a full free-to-play release expected in 2018. 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. Fortnite Battle Royale quickly gained an audience, amassing over 125 million players by May 2018 with estimates of having earned over $1 billion by July 2018 through microtransactions, including its battle pass system. Epic Games, which had been valued at around $825 million at the time of Tencent's acquisition, was estimated to be worth $4.5 billion in July 2018 due to Fortnite Battle Royale, and expected to surpass $8.5 billion by the end of 2018 with projected growth of the game. Player count continued to expand when Epic broke new ground by convincing Sony to change its stance on cross-platform play allowing players on any device to compete with each other in Fortnite Battle Royale. Fortnite has drawn nearly 250 million players as of March 2019.

Fortnite's commercial success enabled Epic to make several changes to its other product offerings. In July 2018, it reduced the revenue cut that it took for assets sold on the Unreal Engine Marketplace from 30% to 12%. 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. 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 financial success of Fortnite brought additional investment into Epic Games. 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. Disney had selected both Epic and aXiomatic as potential leads in the growing esports arena.

Epic's has used its windfall to support its products. In January 2019, following a dispute between Improbable and Unity Technologies over changes to the acceptable uses of the Unity game engine, Epic announced it was partnering with Improbable to launch a $25 million fund to help bring developers they believe affected by these changes towards solutions that are more open and would have fewer service compatibilities. Epic launched a $100 million prize pool in February 2019 for Fortnite-related esports activities that it plans to run from 2019 onward. To expand its esports initiatives, Epic Games hired Nate Nanzer from Blizzard Entertainment and their commissioner of the Overwatch League in May 2019. At the 2019 Game Developers Conference, Epic announced it was launching a $100 million MegaGrants initiative, allowing anyone to apply for up to $500,000 in funding to support game development using the Unreal Engine or for any project, even if not directly games-related, that would benefit the Unreal Engine. One of the first major funded entities under this was the Blender Foundation in July 2019, having received $1.2 million from the MegaGrants funding, to help them to improve and professionalize their Blender tools for 3D art creation.

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, a software which also earned it the Engineering Excellence Award from the Hollywood Professional Association.

Epic announced in March 2020 it was establishing a new multi-platform publishing label, Epic Games Publishing. 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. The company expanded their publishing options in October 2021 with Spry Fox and Eyes Out.

Unreal Engine 5 was announced on May 13, 2020, with plans for an early 2022 release. 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 further waived all Unreal license fees retroactively for games up through the first $1 million in revenue, regardless of how they were published, retroactively starting from January 1, 2020.

Bloomberg reported that Epic was nearing a $17 billion valuation in June 2020 once it had completed a new $750 million investing round from its previous investors and newcomings T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Baillie Gifford. The company partnered with Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. to acquire distribution rights for Inception, Batman Begins and The Prestige as part of "Movie Nite" on Fortnite's "Party Royale" island. The film live streams were based on a user's country.

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. This included a $250 million investment from Sony, approximately a 1.4% stake in the company. The deal continues the two companies' technology collaboration after they had worked together on the development of Unreal Engine 5, but does not commit Epic to any exclusivity to the Sony PlayStation platform. Sweeney said that Sony had started talking with Epic about investing following the demonstration of the Unreal Engine 5 in May 2020.

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 their new headquarters and campus, with the conversion to be complete by 2024.

Epic unveiled its MetaHuman Creator project in February 2021. Based on the technology from 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel, the MetaHuman Creator is a browser-based application to allow game developers to create realistic human characters within a short amount of time starting from various presets, and then can be exported as pre-made models and animation files ready for use in Unreal Engine.

Epic announced a partnership with Cesium in March 2021 to bring its 3D geospatial data as a free add-on into the Unreal Engine.

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. The round of funding included another $200 million strategic investment from Sony. Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder with these additional investments.

The Information reported that Epic Games was launching a new scripted entertainment division in October 2021, bringing on three former executives from Lucasfilm to manage it, with initial plans for a Fortnite film.

In February 2022 Epic Games announced that at least half a billion accounts have been created on its platform.

Epic released the initial beta version of RealityScan, a mobile app that uses the tools from Capturing Reality and Quixel, in April 2022. RealityScan allows users to create 3D models that can be imported into Sketchfab using photos taken by the user.

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. These investments gave Kirkbi 3% ownership and increased Sony's to 4.9%. With these investments, Epic had an estimated valuation of $32 billion. Epic and Lego also announced their partnership to build a child-friendly space in the metaverse that same month.

The company announced in September 2023 that it was laying off 870 employees, along with divesting in Bandcamp to Songtradr and spinning off SuperAwesome into its own company. Sweeney said this move was needed to rein in spending, and did not anticipate there would be further layoffs in the future. Mediatonic reported a significant number of layoffs from their team, but remained part of Epic.

Acquisitions

In 2008, Epic acquired Utah based Chair Entertainment, developer of Undertow. Summer 2009 saw the launch of Chair's Shadow Complex, an adventure game inspired by the Metroid series.

Epic announced in October 2018 that it had acquired $1.25 billion in investment from seven firms: KKR, ICONIQ Capital, Smash Ventures, aXiomatic, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The firms join Tencent, Disney, and Endeavor as minority shareholders in Epic. With the investment, Epic Games was estimated to have a nearly $15 billion valuation in October 2018.

Besides expanding support for Fortnite and the Epic Games Store, these investments allowed Epic to acquire additional firms. In January 2018, it was announced that Epic had acquired Cloudgine, a developer of cloud-based gaming software. The company also announced the acquisition of Kamu, a firm that offered anti-cheat software called Easy Anti-Cheat, in October 2018. A year later, in January 2019, Epic acquired 3Lateral and Agog Labs. 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 plans to add some of 3Lateral's features to the Unreal Engine. Agog had developed SkookumScript, a platform for scripting events in video games; on the announcement of this acquisition, Agog stated they will stop the development of SkookumScript to work more on Unreal Engine scripting support.

Epic acquired Psyonix, the developer of Rocket League, in May 2019. Epic and Psyonix have had a past history, as Psyonix was originally founded a few miles from Epic's headquarters and had contributed to Epic's Unreal Tournament. Besides ongoing support for Rocket League, Psyonix developed an arcade-style car racing game inside of Fortnite, named Rocket Racing, which was added in December 2023.

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. Epic acquired Life on Air, the developers behind Houseparty, a social networking service, in June 2019. The monetary terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Epic later shuttered Houseparty's app in October 2021, though the team behind it was continuing to develop social apps for Epic's platforms.

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 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. The company acquired Cubic Motion, a studio that provides highly detailed digital facial animations for both films and video games, in March 2020.

Epic acquired SuperAwesome, a firm that has developed services to support children-safe games and services around games, in September 2020, as 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 acquired the digital facial animation firm Hyprsense in November 2020.

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. RAD's tools will still remain available outside of Unreal as well.

In March 2021, Epic announced it was acquiring the Tonic Games Group, which includes developers Mediatonic and Fortitude Games. Mediatonic's Fall Guys, a major success during 2020, would remain available on Steam while Epic would help to bring it to additional platforms. Epic buying Tonic Games Group falls under the company's broader plans of creating its own metaverse. Additionally in March, Epic acquired Capturing Reality, the developers of RealityCapture, a photogrammetry suite that can create 3D models from numerous photographs. Epic plans to integrate RealityCapture into the Unreal Engine.

Epic Games acquired ArtStation, a professional artists' marketplace, in April 2021. 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%. In July 2021, Epic acquired Sketchfab, a marketplace for 3D models. As with ArtStation, the acquisition allowed Sketchfab to reduce its pricing structure, lowering its revenue cut on purchases to 12% and making their Sketchfab Plus level of membership free.

In November 2021, Epic Games acquired Harmonix, a music game developer, for undisclosed terms. Harmonix continued to support their 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,

Epic acquired the indie music platform Bandcamp in March 2022. Bandcamp was expected to remain independently operated under Epic while gaining the benefits of Epic's backend services. In April 2023, Epic acquired Brazilian studio Aquiris and changed its name to Epic Games Brasil, with the intention to be used in Fortnite. In September 2023, Epic sold Bandcamp to music licensing company Songtradr.

Products

Video games

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.

Unreal Engine

Main article: Unreal Engine

Epic is the proprietor of five successful game engines in the video game industry. Each Unreal Engine has a complete feature set of graphical rendering, sound processing, and physics that can be widely adapted to fit the specific needs of a game developer that does not want to code their own engine from scratch. The five engines Epic has created are Unreal Engine 1, Unreal Engine 2 (including its 2.5 and 2.X releases), Unreal Engine 3, Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5. Epic also provides support to the Unreal marketplace, a digital storefront for creators to sell Unreal assets to other developers. Further, since 2019, Epic has provided support for filmmakers which have utilized the Unreal Engine to create virtual sets for productions such as The Mandalorian, and will be backing major animated feature film production using Unreal, starting with Gilgamesh with studios Hook Up, DuermeVela and FilmSharks.

Epic Games Store

Epic announced its own Epic Games Store, an open digital storefront for games, on December 4, 2018, which launched a few days later with The Game Awards 2018 presentation. 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 Online Services

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. It was first released for all in May 2020. Support for anti-cheat and voice chat was added in June 2021.

Productivity products

Other productivity products include ArtStation, Sketchfab, Twinmotion, RealityCapture, RealityScan and Quixel. Epic and Autodesk partnered in September 2022, making Twinmotion available to Revit subscribers.

The MetaHuman Creator is a project based on technology from three companies acquired by Epic—3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel—to allow developers to quickly create realistic human characters that can then be exported for use within Unreal. Through partnership with Cesium, Epic plans to offer a free plugin to provide 3D geospatial data for Unreal users, allowing them to recreate any part of the mapped surface of Earth. Epic will include RealityCapture, a product it acquired with its acquisition of Capturing Reality that can generate 3D models of any object from a collection of photographs taken of it from multiple angles, and the various middleware tools offered by Epic Game Tools.

Subsidiaries and divisions

Locations

Name	Location	Founded	Acquired	Ref(s).
Epic Games Australia	Burwood, Australia	2018	—
Epic Games Brasil	Porto Alegre, Brazil	2007	2023
Epic Games China	Shanghai, China	2006	—
Epic Games Germany	Berlin, Germany	2016
Epic Games Japan	Yokohama, Japan	2010
Epic Games Korea	Seoul, South Korea	2009
Epic Games Montreal	Montreal , Canada	2018
Epic Games Publishing	—	2020
Epic Games Seattle	Bellevue, Washington, US	2012
Epic Games Stockholm	Stockholm, Sweden	2018
Epic Games San Francisco	San Francisco , US	2012
Epic Games UK	Sunderland, England	2014

Subsidiaries

Name	Area	Location	Founded	Acquired	Ref(s).
3Lateral	Motion capture digitization	Novi Sad, Serbia	2008	2019
ArtStation	Professional artist marketplace	Montreal , Canada	2014	2021
Capturing Reality	Photogrammetry software	Bratislava, Slovakia	2015	2021
Cubic Motion	Facial animation	Manchester, England	2009	2020
Harmonix	Music game developer	Boston, Massachusetts	1995	2021
Psyonix	Video game development	San Diego, US	2000	2019
Quixel	Photogrammetry assets	Uppsala, Sweden	2011	2019
Epic Game Tools (formerly RAD Game Tools)	Game middleware	Bellevue, Washington	1988	2021
Sketchfab	3D model marketplace	Paris, France	2012	2021
Tonic Games Group (Mediatonic)	Video game development	London, England	2005	2021

Former

Name	Location	Founded	Acquired	Divested	Fate	Ref.
Agog Labs	Vancouver , Canada	2013	2019		Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
Bandcamp	Oakland, US	2008	2022	2023	Sold to Songtradr
Chair Entertainment	Salt Lake City, US	2005	2008	Unknown	Closed
Cloudgine	Edinburgh, Scotland	2012	2018		Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
Hyprsense	Burlingame, California	2015	2020		Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
Impossible Studios	Baltimore, US	2012	—	2013	Closed	Template:Centered
Kamu	Helsinki, Finland	2013	2018		Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
Life on Air	San Francisco , US	2012	2019		Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
People Can Fly (Epic Games Poland)	Warsaw, Poland	2002	2012	2015	Sold to management	Template:Centered
RAD Games Tools	Kirkland, Washington, US	1988	2021		Software development moved internally to Epic Games.
SuperAwesome	London, England	2013	2020	2023	Spun off

Legal issues

Litigation with Silicon Knights

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". The suit alleged that Epic Games was "sabotaging" Unreal Engine 3 licensees. Epic's licensing document stated that a working version of the engine would be available within six months of the Xbox 360 developer kits being released. Silicon Knights claimed that Epic missed this deadline and that when a working version of the engine was eventually released, the documentation was insufficient. The game studio also claimed Epic had withheld vital improvements to the game engine, claiming they were game-specific, while also using licensing fees to fund the development of its own titles rather than the engine itself.

In August 2007, Epic Games counter-sued Silicon Knights, alleging the studio was aware when it signed on that certain features of Unreal Engine 3 were still in development and that components would continue to be developed and added as Epic completed work on Gears of War. Therefore, in a statement, Epic said that "SK knew when it committed to the licensing agreement that Unreal Engine 3 may not meet its requirements and may not be modified to meet them". 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. 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, a partnership for which it never received a license fee.

On May 30, 2012, Epic Games defeated Silicon Knights' lawsuit and won its counter-suit for $4.45 million on grounds of copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of contract, an injury award that was later doubled due to prejudgment interest, attorneys' fees and costs. Consistent with Epic's counterclaims, the presiding judge, James C. Dever III, stated that Silicon Knights had "deliberately and repeatedly copied thousands of lines of Epic Games' copyrighted code, and then attempted to conceal its wrongdoing by removing Epic Games' copyright notices and by disguising Epic Games' copyrighted code as Silicon Knights' own". Dever stated that evidence against Silicon Knights was "overwhelming", as it not only copied functional code but also "non-functional, internal comments Epic Games' programmers had left for themselves".

As a result, on November 7, 2012, Silicon Knights was directed by the court to destroy all game code derived from Unreal Engine 3, all information from licensee-restricted areas of Epic's Unreal Engine documentation website, and to permit Epic Games access to the company's servers and other devices to ensure these items have been removed. 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).

On May 16, 2014, Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy and a Certificate of Appointment was issued by the office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, with Collins Barrow Toronto Limited being appointed as trustee in bankruptcy.

Apple and Google disputes

Since as early as 2017, Tim Sweeney had questioned the need for digital storefronts like Valve's Steam, Apple's iOS App Store, and Google Play, to take a 30% revenue sharing cut, and argued that when accounting for current rates of content distribution and other factors needed, a revenue cut of 8% should be sufficient to run any digital storefront profitably. 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.

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. For iOS and Android users, if they purchased through the Apple or Google storefront, they were not given this discount, as Epic said they could not extend the discount due to the 30% revenue cut taken by Apple and Google. Within hours, both Apple and Google had removed Fortnite from their storefronts stating the means of bypassing their payment systems violated the terms of service. Epic immediately filed separate lawsuits against Apple and Google for antitrust and anticompetitive behavior in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Epic did not seek monetary damages in either case but instead was "seeking injunctive relief to allow fair competition in these two key markets that directly affect hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of thousands, if not more, of third-party app developers." 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. The primary opposing argument is: 'Smartphone markers [sic] can do whatever they want.' This is an awful notion. We all have rights, and we need to fight to defend our rights against whoever would deny them."

Apple responded to the lawsuit that it would terminate Epic's developer accounts by August 28, 2020, leading Epic to file a motion for a preliminary injunction to force Apple to return Fortnite to the App Store and prevent them from terminating Epic's developer accounts, as the latter action would leave Epic unable to update the Unreal Engine for any changes to iOS or macOS and leave developers that relied on Unreal at risk. The court granted the preliminary injunction against Apple from terminating the developer accounts as Epic had shown "potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself, and to the gaming industry generally", but refused to grant the injunction related to Fortnite as "The current predicament appears of [Epic's] own making." 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.

U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued her first ruling on Epic Games v. Apple on September 10, 2021. Rogers found in favor of Apple on nine of ten counts brought up against them in the case, including Epic's charges related to Apple's 30% revenue cut and Apple's prohibition against third-party marketplaces on the iOS environment. Rogers did rule against Apple on the final charge related to anti-steering provisions, and issued a permanent injunction that, in 90 days from the ruling, blocked Apple from preventing developers from linking app users to other storefronts from within apps to complete purchases or from collecting information within an app, such as an email, to notify users of these storefronts. Rogers' ruling was upheld at the Ninth Circuit on appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case, leaving Rogers' order against Apple in place.

Google initially sought to negotiate with Epic but later filed their own countersuit against Epic for breach of contract. The Google case was set as a jury trial, held in November and December 2023. Prior to this, other groups had filed their own lawsuits against Google for similar reasons as Epic, including a coalition of states and the Match Group, but these were settled just ahead of the trial. The jury found for Epic on all claims made, determining that Google maintained a monopoly on the Android marketplace by how it managed the Play Store and used its leverage as a big tech firm to make deal with partners, including some deals made as a result of the earlier settlements. A second phase of this trial to determine remedies is scheduled to occur in January 2024.

FTC child privacy settlement

In December 2022, Epic Games was fined a combined $520 million after the Federal Trade Commission accused the company of separate accounts related to Fortnite, one for violating COPPA related to children's privacy by collecting personal data without parent or guardian consent, exposing children and teens to potential harassment, and a second related to misleading users into making unwanted purchases while playing the game. Epic Games said "No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here. The laws have not changed, but their application has evolved and long-standing industry practices are no longer enough. We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players. Over the past few years, we've been making changes to ensure our ecosystem meets the expectations of our players and regulators, which we hope will be a helpful guide for others in our industry."

Criticism

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. These concerns have been connected to broader issues of general distrust of the Chinese government and Chinese corporations among some Western video game players. Epic has stated that Tencent does not have access to any of this private data nor provides this to the Chinese government.

In late March 2020, accusations began circulating on social media that the Epic Games social networking app Houseparty led to other services such as Netflix and Spotify being hacked. However, both Epic and Life on Air claimed this was a smear campaign against its product and offered a $1 million bounty for anyone able to substantiate their claim.

Further reading

• Keighley, Geoffrey. "Blinded By Reality: The True Story Behind the Creation of Unreal". http://www.gamespot.com/features/makeunreal/. 
• Berardini, César A. (June 30, 2005). "Everything You Wanted to Know About Unreal". http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/1199/Everything-You-Wanted-to-Know-About-Unreal/p1/. 
• Porter, Will (October 26, 2007). "The Epic tradition". https://www.gamesradar.com/the-epic-tradition/. 
• Blancato, Joe (May 13, 2008). "Epic's Rainmakers". http://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_149/4896-Epic-s-Rainmakers. 
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