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 in 1991 as Potomac Computer Systems, which was originally located in his parents' home in Potomac, Maryland. Following their first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company founded Epic Megagames, Inc. in early 1992. And brought in Mark Rein, who is the company's vice president to date. Moving its headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio's name was simplified to Epic Games.
Epic Games develops Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine that also powers their internally developed video games, such as Fortnite and 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 video game developers Chair Entertainment, Psyonix, and Mediatonic as well as cloud-based software developer CloudGin, and operates eponymous sub-studios in Seattle, England, Berlin, Yokohama, and Seoul. While Sweeney remains a majority shareholder, Tencent took a 48.4% outstanding stake, equivalent to 40% of total Epic in the company in 2012, as part of an agreement aimed at taking Epic towards the game as a service model. Following the release of the popular Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017, the company gained additional investment, which enabled it to expand its unreal engine offerings, establish esport events around Fortnite, and launch the Epic Games Store. As of April 2021, the company's equity valuation is the US $ 28.7 billion.
On August 13, 2020, Epic released a version of Fortnite, which included a permanent discount on V-Bucks on all platforms, but for those on iOS and Android devices, only if they bypassed Apple and Google's storefront while buying directly through Epic. Both Apple and Google immediately removed the game for violating the storefront's terms of service by including their storefront, which led to Epic filing a lawsuit against the two companies on the same day, including how they operated their App Store Accused of antitrust behavior.
History
Potomac Computer Systems (1991–1992)
Potomac Computer Systems was founded in 1991 by Tim Sweeney. At the time, Sweeney was studying mechanical engineering and living in a hostel at the University of Maryland. He often visited his parents, who lived in nearby Potomac, Maryland, where his personal computer, used for both work and leisure, was located. From this location, Sweeney started Potomac Computer Systems as a computer consulting business, but he later felt that he would have to do a lot more work to keep the business stable and dropped the idea.
After ending his game ZZT, Sweeney opted to reuse the name Potomac Computer Systems in January 1991 to release the game to the public. This was only accompanied by the unexpected success of ZZT, which in most parts was due to the game's easy variability. Sweeney's custom ZZT-oop programming language, which led Sweeney to consider turning Potomac computer systems into a video game company. The ZZT was sold through a bulletin board system, while all orders were fulfilled by Sweeney's father, Paul Sweeney. The game sold several thousand copies until May 2009, and Paul Sweeney lived at the address of the former Potomac computer system at the time, eventually completing all orders that came by mail. The final copy of ZZT was sent in November 2013 by Paul Sweeney.
Epic MegaGames (1992-1999)
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. Sometime 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)
Unrealistic and personal computer gaming (1999–2006)
In February 1999, Epic Megagames announced that they had moved their headquarters to a new location in Cary, North Carolina, and would now be known simply as Epic Games. Rein explained that "Unreal was first created by developers who were scattered around the world until eventually, the team came together to finish the game, and that's when the real magic began. North Carolina's moves centralize Epic, causing All of the company's talented developers to come in. Under one roof. " In addition, Sweeney stated that the "mega" part of the name had been removed because they no longer wanted to pretend to be a large company, as the original intention of the name was when it was a one-man team. The follow-up game, Unreal Tournament, was sent to critical acclaim that same year, at which time the studio had 13 employees.
The company launched the Make Something Unreal competition in 2004, which aims to reward video game developers who create mods using the Unreal Game Engine. In the first competition in 2004, Tripwire Interactive won the US $ 80,000 in cash and computer hardware prizes during the competition.
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