How "Fortnite" made epic games a billionaire business – Variety

Fortnite's dazzling success and its very popular royal battle mode helped turn already-popular game creator and game creator Epic Games into a $ 5- $ 8 billion company, according to the Bloomberg Index Billionaires. Although Bloomberg does not identify how he found this figure, he quotes analysts who seem to support him. He also notes that Tencent owns 40% of the company, but that founder and chairman Tim Sweeney is the majority shareholder.

Although the impact of Fortnite on Epic Games can not be underestimated, references to the World Cup game, to the worlds of music and film – the real driving force of the success of the game. business is a decision taken in 2012 to move away from headlines and expensive games for a more agile society that

In the case of the chicken or the egg, the decision to move to what was known at the # 39; internally under the name of Epic 4.0 was motivated in part by the development of "Fortnite" which started indie title inside the studio, and the lessons learned there, said Sweeney in 2016.

In relation

The realization that "Fortnite" would do much better as a free and evolving game led Sweeney to realize that he had to change the direction of the company. "I would describe it as a vision of writing on the wall," Sweeney said. "There was a growing realization that the old model was no longer working and that the new model was looking more and more like the road ahead."

"It boils down to a decision: what are we doing with our society? Are we entering a new generation of publisher agreement and continuing as we were?", He says. . "We dismissed it shortly after the release of" Gears of War 3. "We realized that the company really needed to change its approach significantly.We saw some of the best games of The industry be built and operated as live games over time rather than large retail sales.We recognized that the ideal role for Epic in the industry is to drive this, and so we have began to be a fairly narrow console developer focused on Xbox to be a cross-platform game developer and self-publisher, and independent on a larger

To obtain the necessary money to change drastically. As a result, Epic entered into an agreement with Tencent, disposing of approximately 48% of the outstanding shares of the company, or approximately 40% of Epic, for $ 330 million

. allowed Epic to make major changes s, including removing the monthly fees for its game engine and attributing it to anyone who wanted to use it. To balance that, Epic took a royalty reduction of everything that was created with its engine. The result immediately resulted in the company's biggest profits for the engine of its history.

Entering this new phase, Epic refocused its efforts on three titles: "Paragon", "Unreal Tournament" and "Fortnite". "

And of the three games, it's" Fortnite "that strikes the biggest.

The decision to keep" Fortnite "in pre-launch for nearly five years before releasing it and the will of Test a new mode With the Royal Battle, both were born from Epic's decision in 2012 to become a more agile company.According to analysts, the company is expected to realize $ 2 billion less this year.