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114-573: 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

228-593: A database , Voice over IP , or add-in interface software; this is also known as middleware . Examples of this include SpeedTree and Havoc . Independents are software developers which are not owned by (or dependent on) a single publisher. Some of these developers self-publish their games, relying on the Internet and word of mouth for publicity. Without the large marketing budgets of mainstream publishers, their products may receive less recognition than those of larger publishers such as Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. With

342-561: A $ 1.5 billion investment from The Walt Disney Company . Pending regulatory approval, Disney will acquire a 9% stake. Disney plans to co-develop new games and an "entertainment universe" encompassing its properties with Epic. Part of this involved bringing more of the Disney properties to Fortnite ; while Fortnite had already featured numerous cosmetics based on Marvel Comics and Star Wars , Disney announced new plans to bring its classic animated characters and those from Pixar properties to

456-629: A 'name' in this business of video games." He also went to the Nintendo World Championships when he was 15, coming in second in Massachusetts . In 1998, Bleszinski rose to fame in the Internet when he held a contest inviting visitors of his website to scan their cats on flatbed scanners and submit the photos for judging. In 2000, PC Gamer featured Bleszinski in the cover of its November issue, calling him one of

570-471: A break. According to a 2015 interview, his original intention was to retire permanently. "I honestly thought I was done... It was a combination of gamers feeling jaded, as well as working with some very talented people who were also very jaded," Bleszinski told Destructoid . "I could pitch the most amazing idea to anybody back when I was at Epic toward the end, and they'd be like 'I don't buy it,'" he added. On June 30, 2014, Cliff announced on Twitter that he

684-452: A culture of "toxic geek masculinity" within the workplace. In addition, the conditions behind crunch time are far more discriminating towards women as this requires them to commit time exclusively to the company or to more personal activities like raising a family. These factors established conditions within some larger development studios where female developers have found themselves discriminated in workplace hiring and promotion, as well as

798-909: A digital replica of their likeness. Epic launched Fab, a unified marketplace for Unreal Engine Marketplace, Sketchfab, AetStation Marketplace, and Quixel assets, on October 22, 2024. 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

912-712: 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

1026-571: A first-party company. As a balance to not being able to release their game for other platforms, second-party developers are usually offered higher royalty rates than third-party developers. These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, but maintain independence so that upon completion or termination of their contracts, they are able to continue developing games for other publishers if they choose to. For example, while HAL Laboratory initially began developing games on personal computers like

1140-410: A fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across all areas of video game development, but as contractors, do not get any benefits such as paid time-off or health care from the employer; they also are typically not credited on games that they work on for this reason. The practice itself is legal and common in other engineering and technology areas, and generally it

1254-415: 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

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1368-496: 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

1482-689: 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

1596-403: A game on schedule. The complexity of workflow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within

1710-406: A game's profits. Current examples of first-party studios include PlayStation Studios for Sony, and Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft Gaming . Second-party developer is a colloquial term often used by gaming enthusiasts and media to describe game studios that take development contracts from platform holders and develop games exclusive to that platform, i.e. a non-owned developer making games for

1824-589: 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

1938-516: 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

2052-431: 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

2166-437: A position in a medium to large video game company. An experienced game-development employee, depending on their expertise and experience, averaged roughly $ 73,000 in 2007. Indie game developers may only earn between $ 10,000 and $ 50,000 a year depending on how financially successful their titles are. In addition to being part of the software industry, game development is also within the entertainment industry; most sectors of

2280-607: A publisher and began to shift the company again. 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

2394-589: 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

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2508-592: A roundtable discussion with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the professional association for developers. Statements made by the IGDA's current executive director Jen MacLean relating to IGDA's activities had been seen by as anti-union, and Game Workers Unite desired to start a conversation to lay out the need for developers to unionize. In the wake of the sudden near-closure of Telltale Games in September 2018,

2622-481: 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

2736-537: 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

2850-407: A single publisher; one canceled game may devastate a small developer. Because of this, many small development companies are short-lived. A common exit strategy for a successful video game developer is to sell the company to a publisher, becoming an in-house developer. In-house development teams tend to have more freedom in game design and content than third-party developers. One reason is that since

2964-403: A strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) background for women at the secondary education level, but there are issues with tertiary education such as at colleges and universities, where game development programs tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may lead women with strong STEM backgrounds to choose other career goals. There

3078-433: 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

3192-646: A unique case where nearly all parts of its labor force, including white-collar jobs such as video game development, may engage with labor unions under the Employment Protection Act often through collective bargaining agreements. Developer DICE had reached its union agreements in 2004. Paradox Interactive became one of the first major publishers to support unionization efforts in June 2020 with its own agreements to cover its Swedish employees within two labor unions Unionen and SACO . In Australia, video game developers could join other unions, but

3306-457: 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

3420-482: Is also a significant gap in racial minorities within the video game industry; a 2019 IGDA survey found only 2% of developers considered themselves to be of African descent and 7% Hispanic, while 81% were Caucasian; in contrast, 2018 estimates from the United States Census estimate the U.S. population to be 13% of African descent and 18% Hispanic. In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries,

3534-450: Is an American video game designer, known for his work on the Unreal and Gears of War series while at Epic Games . After leaving Epic in 2012, he co-founded Boss Key Productions in 2014 which closed in 2018 after the commercial failure of the multiplayer shooter LawBreakers . Since Boss Key's closure, Bleszinski has spent his time with theater and writing. Bleszinski's first game

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3648-449: Is expected that this is meant to lead into a full-time position, or otherwise the end of the contract. But more recently, its use in the video game industry has been compared to Microsoft 's past use of " permatemp ", contract workers that were continually renewed and treated for all purposes as employees but received no benefits. While Microsoft has waned from the practice, the video game industry has adapted it more frequently. Around 10% of

3762-533: Is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction. Older developers with experience may find themselves too qualified for the types of positions that other game development companies seek given the salaries and compensations offered. Some of the larger video game developers and publishers have also engaged contract workers through agencies to help add manpower in game development in part to alleviate crunch time from employees. Contractors are brought on for

3876-500: 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 ,

3990-405: Is married to Lauren Bleszinski (née Berggren), a former professional gamer and id Software employee. Previously, he was married to a woman named Darcy. One of his brothers is Tyler Bleszinski, the founder of Polygon sister site SB Nation . Their father, who died when Cliff was 15, was an engineer for Polaroid . The nickname "CliffyB" was given to him derogatorily by "some jock kid" when he

4104-494: Is still their primary activity they are generally described as "publishers" rather than "developers". Developers may be private as well. In the video game industry , a first-party developer is part of a company that manufactures a video game console and develops mainly for it. First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo ), have a specific division name (such as Sony's Polyphony Digital ) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by

4218-474: Is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with t-shirts and sandals as common work attire. Many workers find this type of environment rewarding and pleasant professionally and personally. However, the industry also requires long working hours from its employees (sometimes to an extent seen as unsustainable). Employee burnout is not uncommon. An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $ 66,000 annually only if they are successful in obtaining

4332-549: The Gears of War franchise, which has sold over 22 million copies and earned over one billion in revenue as of January 2014. Gears of War evolved out of the development of what was going to be a game called Unreal Warfare . As Bleszinski explained in a speech at GDC 2007 entitled "Designing Gears of War: Iteration Wins," the game started out as another first-person shooter in the Unreal universe. Over time, however, influenced by

4446-659: The AFL–CIO writing an open letter to video game developers encouraging them to unionize. In January 2020, Game Workers Unite and the Communications Workers of America established a new campaign to push for unionization of video game developers, the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), in January 2020. Initial efforts for CODE were aimed to determine what approach to unionization would be best suited for

4560-589: 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

4674-456: The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), are conducting increasing discussions about the problem; they are concerned that working conditions in the industry cause a significant deterioration in employees' quality of life. Some video game developers and publishers have been accused of the excessive invocation of "crunch time". "Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch

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4788-516: The MSX , they became one of the earliest second-party developers for Nintendo, developing exclusively for Nintendo's consoles starting with the Famicom, though they would self-publish their mobile games. A third-party developer may also publish games, or work for a video game publisher to develop a title. Both publisher and developer have considerable input in the game's design and content. However,

4902-528: The Me Too movement and have tried to address the symptoms of these problems industry-wide, the video game industry has yet to have its Me Too-moment, even as late as 2021. There also tends to be pay-related discrimination against women in the industry. According to Gamasutra 's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States made 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game designing women had

5016-517: 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

5130-504: The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union doing work for video games struck several major publishers, demanding better royalty payments and provisions related to the safety of their vocal performances, when their union's standard contract was up for renewal. The voice actor strike lasted for over 300 days into 2017 before a new deal was made between SAG-AFTRA and

5244-481: 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. 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,

5358-498: The video game industry . He told the Los Angeles Times : "Someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters isn't getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it. Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to be able to protect creators." Cliff Bleszinski Cliff Bleszinski ( / b l ə ˈ z ɪ n s k i / ; born February 12, 1975), popularly known as CliffyB ,

5472-508: 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

5586-431: The "Next Game Gods." Wired magazine awarded him a Rave Award in 2007 for his work on Gears of War . Shortly before the release of its sequel, Bleszinski was profiled in 2008 by Tom Bissell of The New Yorker in an article titled The Grammar of Fun . On April 12, 2010, he appeared on NBC 's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon , where he showed the debut trailer for Gears of War 3 and cited Space Invaders as

5700-640: The Clair de Lune . He has also expressed interest in returning to the Gears of War series as an adviser. His memoir, Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games , was published in November 2022 by Simon & Schuster . In April 2023, Bleszinski announced that he was writing a comic book series titled Scrapper in collaboration with Alex De Campi, with illustrations by Sandy Jarrell. Its first issue will be released on July 19 by Image Comics . Cliff

5814-446: The IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior management roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers. Further, because video game developers typically draw from personal experiences in building game characters, this diversity gap has led to few characters of racial minority to be featured as main characters within video games. Minority developers have also been harassed from external groups due to

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5928-583: 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

6042-458: 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

6156-535: The acquisition of Activision Blizzard , stated it supported these unionization efforts. After this acquisition, the employees of Bethesda Game Studios , part of Zenimax under Microsoft, unionized under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in July 2024. Over 500 employees within Blizzard Entertainment 's World of Warcraft division also unionized with CWA that same month. Sweden presents

6270-572: The advent of digital distribution of inexpensive games on game consoles, it is now possible for indie game developers to forge agreements with console manufacturers for broad distribution of their games. Other indie game developers create game software for a number of video-game publishers on several gaming platforms. In recent years this model has been in decline; larger publishers, such as Electronic Arts and Activision, increasingly turn to internal studios (usually former independent developers acquired for their development needs). Video game development

6384-399: The board of advisers for Fig , a mixed crowdfunding/investment platform for video games. On May 14, 2018, Bleszinski announced the dissolution of Boss Key Productions, citing lackluster sales. After the closure of Boss Key, Bleszinski has gotten involved with theater production. He invested and co-produced Hadestown , and was similarly involved with a revival of Frankie and Johnny in

6498-431: The closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job, while audio professional women had the largest gap, making 68% of what men in the same position made. Increasing the representation of women in the video game industry required breaking a feedback loop of the apparent lack of female representation in the production of video games and in the content of video games. Efforts have been made to provide

6612-427: 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 . By July 2017, Fortnite was finally in a state for public play. Epic launched the title through a paid early access then, with

6726-688: 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. 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,

6840-446: 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

6954-416: The console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog ). Whether by purchasing an independent studio or by founding a new team, the acquisition of a first-party developer involves a huge financial investment on the part of the console manufacturer, which is wasted if the developer fails to produce a hit game on time. However, using first-party developers saves the cost of having to make royalty payments on

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7068-508: The console. This established the use of licensing fees as a model for third-party development that persists into the present. The licensing fee approach was further enforced by Nintendo when it decided to allow other third-party developers to make games for the Famicom console, setting a 30% licensing fee that covered game cartridge manufacturing costs and development fees. The 30% licensing fee for third-party developers has also persisted to

7182-468: The cover mechanic in Namco's 2003 game Kill Switch and the third-person Resident Evil 4 , Unreal Warfare became the game known as Gears of War . In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. After 20 years with the company, Cliff announced his departure from Epic Games on October 3, 2012, saying he had been making video games since he was a teen and wanted to take

7296-472: 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: Epic continued its goal to deliver games as

7410-444: The developer if the game is not meeting expectations. When each milestone is completed (and accepted), the publisher pays the developer an advance on royalties . Successful developers may maintain several teams working on different games for different publishers. Generally, however, third-party developers tend to be small, close-knit teams. Third-party game development is a volatile sector, since small developers may depend on income from

7524-458: 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

7638-417: The developers are the publisher's employees, their interests align with those of the publisher; the publisher may spend less effort ensuring that the developer's decisions do not enrich the developer at the publisher's expense. Activision in 1979 became the first third-party video game developer. When four Atari, Inc. programmers left the company following its sale to Warner Communications , partially over

7752-968: 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. Video game developer A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles , or may develop for several systems (including personal computers and mobile devices ). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games. Most video game publishers maintain development studios (such as Electronic Arts 's EA Canada , Square Enix 's studios, Activision 's Radical Entertainment , Nintendo EPD and Sony's Polyphony Digital and Naughty Dog ). However, since publishing

7866-467: The entertainment industry (such as films and television ) require long working hours and dedication from their employees, such as willingness to relocate and/or required to develop games that do not appeal to their personal taste. The creative rewards of work in the entertainment business attracts labor to the industry, creating a competitive labor market that demands a high level of commitment and performance from employees. Industry communities, such as

7980-602: 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

8094-558: 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

8208-516: The first video game-specific union, Game Workers Unite Australia, was formed in December 2021 under Professionals Australia to become active in 2022. In Canada, in a historic move, video game workers in Edmonton unanimously voted to unionize for the first time in June 2022. In January 2023, after not being credited in The Last of Us HBO adaptation, Bruce Straley called for unionization of

8322-446: 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. 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",

8436-429: 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,

8550-534: The game. In July 2024, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), an actor labor union of which numerous video game voice actors are members of, would initiate a labor strike against a number of video publishers, including Epic Games, over concerns about lack of A.I. protections related to not only video game actors, but also the use of A.I to replicate an actor’s voice, or create

8664-404: The gaming industry, while a 2017 IGDA survey found that the female demographic in game development had risen to about 20%. Taking into account that a 2017 ESA survey found 41% of video game players were female, this represented a significant gender gap in game development. The male-dominated industry, most who have grown up playing video games and are part of the video game culture , can create

8778-416: 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

8892-457: The industry by working long hours. Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. The use of crunch time as a workplace standard gained attention first in 2004, when Erin Hoffman exposed

9006-619: 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

9120-431: The lack of respect that the new management gave to programmers, they used their knowledge of how Atari VCS game cartridges were programmed to create their own games for the system, founding Activision in 1979 to sell these. Atari took legal action to try to block the sale of these games, but the companies ultimately settled, with Activision agreeing to pay a portion of their sales as a license fee to Atari for developing for

9234-527: 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. On February 7, 2024, Epic Games received

9348-559: The movement again called out for the industry to unionize. The movement argued that Telltale had not given any warning to its 250 employees let go, having hired additional staff as recently as a week prior, and left them without pensions or health-care options; it was further argued that the studio considered this a closure rather than layoffs, as to get around failure to notify required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs. The situation

9462-448: The nature of the video game culture. The industry also is recognized to have an ageism issue, discriminating against the hiring and retention of older developers. A 2016 IGDA survey found only 3% of developers were over 50 years old, while at least two-thirds were between 20 and 34; these numbers show a far lower average age compared to the U.S. national average of about 41.9 that same year. While discrimination by age in hiring practices

9576-540: The news, there have typically been followup discussions towards the potential to form a union. A survey performed by the International Game Developers Association in 2014 found that more than half of the 2,200 developers surveyed favored unionization. A similar survey of over 4,000 game developers run by the Game Developers Conference in early 2019 found that 47% of respondents felt the video game industry should unionize. In 2016, voice actors in

9690-694: The present, being a de facto rate used for most digital storefronts for third-party developers to offer their games on the platform. In recent years, larger publishers have acquired several third-party developers. While these development teams are now technically "in-house", they often continue to operate in an autonomous manner (with their own culture and work practices). For example, Activision acquired Raven (1997); Neversoft (1999), which merged with Infinity Ward in 2014; Z-Axis (2001); Treyarch (2001); Luxoflux (2002); Shaba (2002); Infinity Ward (2003) and Vicarious Visions (2005). All these developers continue operating much as they did before acquisition,

9804-414: The primary differences being exclusivity and financial details. Publishers tend to be more forgiving of their own development teams going over budget (or missing deadlines) than third-party developers. A developer may not be the primary entity creating a piece of software, usually providing an external software tool which helps organize (or use) information for the primary software product. Such tools may be

9918-429: The publisher's wishes generally override those of the developer. Work for hire studios solely execute the publishers vision. The business arrangement between the developer and publisher is governed by a contract, which specifies a list of milestones intended to be delivered over a period of time. By updating its milestones, the publisher verifies that work is progressing quickly enough to meet its deadline and can direct

10032-415: The publishers. While this had some effects on a few games within the industry, it brought to the forefront the question of whether video game developers should unionize. A grassroots movement, Game Workers Unite , was established around 2017 to discuss and debate issues related to unionization of game developers. The group came to the forefront during the March 2018 Game Developers Conference by holding

10146-766: 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

10260-463: 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,

10374-437: 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

10488-548: 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

10602-545: The target of sexual harassment. This can be coupled from similar harassment from external groups, such as during the 2014 Gamergate controversy . Major investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that went unchecked by management, as well as discrimination by employers, have been brought up against Riot Games , Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard in the late 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers. However, while other entertainment industries have had similar exposure through

10716-497: 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,

10830-489: 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

10944-700: 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

11058-430: The time, earning him enough money to buy his first apartment and car. It was also around this time that he joined Sweeney and James Schmalz on what would become Unreal , which received a follow-up, Unreal Tournament , and expanded into a series of games. In addition to his work on the Unreal series, Bleszinski served as creative consultant on Rune , and as lead designer on the first three installments of

11172-484: The toxic nature of the video game culture. This racial diversity issue has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to result both have been suggested, such as improving grade school education, developing games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identifying toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race. In regards to LGBT and other gender or sexual orientations,

11286-432: 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

11400-487: The use of crunch time at Electronic Arts , a situation known as the "EA Spouses" case. A similar "Rockstar Spouses" case gained further attention in 2010 over working conditions at Rockstar San Diego . Since then, there has generally been negative perception of crunch time from most of the industry as well as from its consumers and other media. Game development had generally been a predominately male workforce. In 1989, according to Variety , women constituted only 3% of

11514-469: 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

11628-508: The video game industry typically shares the same demographics as with the larger population based on a 2005 IGDA survey. Those in the LGBT community do not find workplace issues with their identity, though work to improve the representation of LGBT themes within video games in the same manner as with racial minorities. However, LGBT developers have also come under the same type of harassment from external groups like women and racial minorities due to

11742-678: The video game industry. Whereas some video game employees believe they should follow the craft-based model used by SAG-AFTRA which would unionize based on job function, others feel an industry-wide union, regardless of job position, would be better. Starting in 2021, several smaller game studios in the United States began efforts to unionize. These mostly involved teams doing quality assurance rather than developers. These studios included three QA studios under Blizzard Entertainment : Raven Software , Blizzard Albany , and Proletariat; and Zenimax Media 's QA team. Microsoft , which had previously acquired Zenimax and announced plans to acquire Blizzard via

11856-504: The workforce in video games is estimated to be from contract labor. Similar to other tech industries, video game developers are typically not unionized . This is a result of the industry being driven more by creativity and innovation rather than production, the lack of distinction between management and employees in the white-collar area, and the pace at which the industry moves that makes union actions difficult to plan out. However, when situations related to crunch time become prevalent in

11970-593: Was The Palace of Deceit , an adventure title he started at the age of 15. Programmed in Visual Basic , its second version came out when he was 16. Bleszinski got his start at Epic Games in 1992, after submitting his game Dare to Dream to the company's CEO, Tim Sweeney . Though Dare to Dream did not achieve a great success, it led Bleszinski to work on Jazz Jackrabbit , a platformer co-developed by demoscene coder Arjan Brussee . The title, which came out in 1994, became Epic's biggest selling game at

12084-450: Was "coming out of retirement to make video games again" and would be unveiling his next project in the next week. The new game, a free-to-play , PC-focused arena shooter code-named BlueStreak , would be published by Nexon and developed by his new studio, Boss Key Productions , which he co-founded with Brussee the same year. A year later, Bleszinski revealed that the arena shooter would be called LawBreakers . In May 2016, he joined

12198-456: Was a shy teenager; he then took it and developed a tougher persona around it. However, in 2008 he expressed a desire to retire the moniker, saying it's "time to grow up a bit". In 1987, Bleszinski got a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, which turned him into a huge video game fan. "My friends nicknamed me 'Nintendo Boy' because my entire life revolved around my NES. I was eating Nintendo cereal, wearing Nintendo clothing. My dream job

12312-668: Was argued to be "exploitive", as Telltale had been known to force its employees to frequently work under "crunch time" to deliver its games. By the end of 2018, a United Kingdom trade union, Game Workers Unite UK, an affiliate of the Game Workers Unite movement, had been legally established. Following Activision Blizzard 's financial report for the previous quarter in February 2019, the company said that they would be laying off around 775 employees (about 8% of their workforce) despite having record profits for that quarter. Further calls for unionization came from this news, including

12426-534: 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

12540-475: 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

12654-453: 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. In February 1999, Epic MegaGames announced that they had moved their headquarters to

12768-478: 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

12882-697: 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

12996-528: Was to work for Nintendo. I was pretty inseparable from my NES," said Bleszinski. He said his favorite NES game of all time is Zanac . In 1988, at 13, Cliff appeared in the first issue of Nintendo Power for earning the high score of 9,999,950 in Super Mario Bros. . Regarding the achievement, he commented in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone "that was probably one of the moments when I realized, deep-down and subconsciously, I wanted to be

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