Re: Epic Games Free Games
Alesha Canant
The Walt Disney Company and Epic Games will collaborate on an all-new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences. Disney will also invest $1.5 billion to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games alongside the multiyear project. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
In addition to being a world-class games experience and interoperating with Fortnite, the new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more. Players, gamers and fans will be able to create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom in a distinctly Disney way, and share content with each other in ways that they love. This will all be powered by Unreal Engine.
Disney and Epic Games have engaged hundreds of millions of players through Fortnite content integrations, season collaborations, in-game activations, and live events, including the Marvel Nexus War with Galactus, which drew more than 15.3 million concurrent players.
The digital world is growing and evolving with more than 3 billion video game players worldwide who want to move safely and seamlessly between the worlds they love, unleash their own creativity, and experience great gameplay.
The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Entertainment, Sports and Experiences. Disney is a Dow 30 company and had annual revenues of $88.9 billion in its Fiscal Year 2023.
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 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.
Potomac Computer Systems was founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991.[6] 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.[6] 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.[6]
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.[6][7] 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,[8] that made Sweeney consider turning Potomac Computer Systems into a video game company.[6] ZZT was sold through bulletin board systems, while all orders were fulfilled by Sweeney's father, Paul Sweeney.[9] 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.[6][9] The final copy of ZZT was shipped by Paul Sweeney in November 2013.[9]
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.[6] 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.[6] 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.[8][6] 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.[6] Some time this season, the company soon had 20 employees consisting of programmers, artists, designers and composers.[10] Among them was the 17-year old Cliff Bleszinski, who joined the company after submitting his game Dare to Dream to Sweeney.[11] The following year, they had over 30 employees.[12]
In 1996, Epic MegaGames produced a shareware isometric shooter called Fire Fight, developed by Polish studio Chaos Works. It was published by Electronic Arts.[13] By 1997, Epic MegaGames had 50 people working for them worldwide.[14] 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.[15]
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.[16] 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."[16] 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.[6] The follow-up game, Unreal Tournament, shipped to critical acclaim the same year,[17] at which point the studio had 13 employees.[18]
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.[19][20]
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".[21] 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.[22][21] A year later, the company released Unreal Tournament 3 for PC and acquired a majority share in People Can Fly.[23][24]
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,[27] which was released on December 9, 2010.[28] The third game in the series, Gears of War 3, came out in 2011.[29]
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.[32] Epic Baltimore was renamed to Impossible Studios in August 2012.[33] However, the studio ended up closing its doors in February 2013.[34][35]
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.[36] 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.[22] 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.[21]
d3342ee215