70 Facts About Epic Games

Epic Games, Inc is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina.

Epic Games was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland.

Epic Games develops Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine which powers their internally developed video games, such as Fortnite and the Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade series.

Epic Games owns the game developers Chair Entertainment, Psyonix, Mediatonic and Harmonix, as well as cloud-based software developer Cloudgine, and operates studios in Seattle, England, Berlin, Yokohama and Seoul.

Epic Games frequently visited his parents, who lived in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where his personal computer, used for both work and leisure, was situated.

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In 1996, Epic MegaGames produced a shareware isometric shooter called Fire Fight, developed by Polish studio Chaos Works.

In 1998, Epic MegaGames released Unreal, a 3D first-person shooter co-developed with Digital Extremes, which expanded into a series of Unreal games.

Epic Games began to license the core technology, the Unreal Engine, to other game developers.

The move to North Carolina centralizes Epic Games, bringing all of the company's talented developers under one roof.

Epic Games decided to shift focus into developing on console systems, a move which Sweeney called the start of the third major iteration of the company, "Epic 3.

In 2006, Epic Games released the Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War, which became a commercial success for the company, grossing about off a budget.

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.

Epic Games worked on an iOS game, Infinity Blade, which was released on December 9, 2010.

In June 2012, Epic announced that it is opening up a new studio, Epic Baltimore, made up of members of 38 Studios' Big Huge Games.

Epic Games Baltimore was renamed to Impossible Studios in August 2012.

At this point, Epic Games had considered developing a fourth main title for Gears of War, but estimated that its budget would be at least.

Epic Games recognized the troubles of being held to the business objectives of a publisher, and began to shift the company again.

Epic Games 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 Games 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.

Epic Games launched the title through a paid early access then, with a full free-to-play release expected in 2018.

Epic Games, which had been valued at around at the time of Tencent's acquisition, was estimated to be worth in July 2018 due to Fortnite Battle Royale, and expected to surpass by the end of 2018 with projected growth of the game.

Player count continued to expand when Epic Games 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.

Fortnites commercial success enabled Epic Games to make several changes to its other product offerings.

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.

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In January 2019, following a dispute between Improbable and Unity Technologies over changes to the acceptable uses of the Unity game engine, Epic Games announced it was partnering with Improbable to launch a fund to help bring developers they believe affected by these changes towards solutions that are more open and would have fewer service compatibilities.

Epic Games launched a prize pool in February 2019 for Fortnite-related esports activities that it plans to run from 2019 onward.

At the 2019 Game Developers Conference, Epic announced it was launching a MegaGrants initiative, allowing anyone to apply for up to 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.

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 earned it the Engineering Excellence Award from the Hollywood Professional Association.

Epic Games expanded their publishing options in October 2021 with Spry Fox and Eyes Out.

Alongside this announcement, Epic Games released its Epic Games Online Services, a free SDK toolset for online matchmaking and other similar cross-platform play support features based on Fortnite.

Bloomberg reported that Epic was nearing a valuation in June 2020 once it had completed a new investing round from its previous investors and newcomings T Rowe Price Group Inc and Baillie Gifford.

Sweeney said that Sony had started talking with Epic Games about investing following the demonstration of the Unreal Engine 5 in May 2020.

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

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 Games released the initial beta version of RealityScan, a mobile app that uses the tools from Capturing Reality and Quixel, in April 2022.

Epic Games 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 Games's metaverse.

In 2008, Epic Games acquired Utah based Chair Entertainment, developer of Undertow.

Epic Games announced in October 2018 that it had acquired in investment from seven firms: KKR, ICONIQ Capital, Smash Ventures, aXiomatic, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

In January 2018, it was announced that Epic Games had acquired Cloudgine, a developer of cloud-based gaming software.

Epic Games announced the acquisition of Kamu, a firm that offered anti-cheat software called Easy Anti-Cheat, in October 2018.

Epic Games acquired Psyonix, the developer of Rocket League, in May 2019.

Epic Games 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.

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Epic Games acquired Life on Air, the developers behind Houseparty, a social networking service, in June 2019.

Epic Games later shuttered Houseparty's app in October 2021, though the team behind it was continuing to develop social apps for Epic Games's platforms.

In November 2019, Epic Games acquired Quixel, the world's largest photogrammetry asset library which makes 3D models of objects based on real-world high-definition photography.

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

Epic Games acquired the digital facial animation firm Hyprsense in November 2020.

In January 2021, Epic Games acquired RAD Game Tools, a company that makes a variety of middleware solutions for video game development which Epic Games plans to incorporate into the Unreal Engine.

In March 2021, Epic announced it was acquiring the Tonic Games Group, which includes developers Mediatonic and Fortitude Games.

Epic buying Tonic Games Group falls under the company's broader plans of creating its own metaverse.

Epic Games acquired ArtStation, a professional artists' marketplace, in April 2021.

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

Harmonix will continue to support their existing games including Rock Band 4 and Fuser and will help Epic with expanding musical experiences and gameplay within Fortnite and Epic's larger metaverse plans.

Epic Games acquired the indie music platform Bandcamp in March 2022.

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 owned by The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios, Infinity Blade, Shadow Complex, Bulletstorm, and Fortnite.

Epic Games is the proprietor of four successful game engines in the video game industry.

Epic Games 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.

The game studio claimed Epic Games had withheld vital improvements to the game engine, claiming they were game-specific, while using licensing fees to fund the development of its own titles rather than the engine itself.

Furthermore, Epic Games 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.

When Epic Games 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 made it a store app.

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Epic Games 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 Games 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.

The court granted the preliminary injunction against Apple from terminating the developer accounts as Epic Games 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 Games's] own making.

Epic Games has stated that Tencent does not have access to any of this private data nor provides this to the Chinese government.

However, both Epic Games and Life on Air claimed this was a smear campaign against its product and offered a bounty for anyone able to substantiate their claim.