Epic Games
| Epic Games | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Type | Private company |
| Industry | Video games, Software, Game engines |
| Founded | 1991 (as Potomac Computer Systems) |
| Founder | Tim Sweeney |
| Headquarters | Cary, North Carolina, United States |
| Notable Personnel | Tim Sweeney (Founder and CEO), Mark Rein (Vice President) |
| Products | Unreal Engine, Fortnite, Epic Games Store, MetaHuman, RealityCapture |
| Parent | Independent (minority stakes held by Tencent, Sony, Disney, Kirkbi) |
| Website | https://www.epicgames.com |
Epic Games is an American video game and software company headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. It develops Unreal Engine, a 3D game engine widely licensed for games, film, and real-time graphics, and the games Fortnite and the Infinity Blade series, and it operates the Epic Games Store digital storefront. The company was founded in 1991 by Tim Sweeney.[1]
Epic's relevance to Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality comes mainly through Unreal Engine, which is one of the two engines (alongside Unity) used to build a large share of VR and AR content. Epic is a founding member of the OpenXR working group, the cross-platform standard for VR and AR maintained by the Khronos Group.[2] The company also shipped its own VR titles, the demo Bullet Train and the shooter Robo Recall, and has positioned Fortnite as a social platform tied to its broader "metaverse" ambitions.[3][4]
History
Founding and early games
Tim Sweeney founded the company in 1991 as Potomac Computer Systems, working from his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Its first release was the shareware game ZZT in 1991. In early 1992 the company was renamed Epic MegaGames, and Mark Rein joined as vice president, a position he has held since. The name was chosen to make the small operation sound larger than it was. After the company moved its headquarters to Cary, North Carolina in 1999, it dropped "Mega" and became Epic Games, with Sweeney saying the company no longer wanted to pretend to be big.[1]
Through the 1990s and 2000s Epic built its reputation on action games and the technology behind them, including the Unreal and Gears of War franchises. Unreal Engine, first released in 1998 with the game Unreal, grew into a separate business as Epic licensed it to other developers.[1]
Unreal Engine business and the Epic Games Store
In March 2015 Epic made Unreal Engine 4 free to use, switching to a royalty model that charged a percentage of revenue on commercial products above a sales threshold.[1] In December 2018 the company launched the Epic Games Store, a PC digital storefront that took a 12 percent cut of sales, lower than the 30 percent charged by Steam. The store competed directly with Valve's platform and was funded in part by the revenue from Fortnite.[1]
Fortnite
Epic released Fortnite Battle Royale in September 2017 as a free-to-play game across PC, console, and mobile. It became one of the most commercially successful games of its era, passing one billion US dollars in revenue by mid-2018 through cosmetic microtransactions.[1] Fortnite has also hosted live in-game events, including a virtual performance by the rapper Travis Scott in April 2020 that Guinness World Records recognized as the largest concert held inside a video game, with about 12.3 million concurrent participants.[5][6]
Ownership
Epic Games is privately held, with founder Tim Sweeney holding majority control. Several large companies hold minority stakes. In June 2012 the Chinese conglomerate Tencent invested 330 million US dollars for a holding the company has described as around 40 percent of Epic, inclusive of stock and employee stock options.[7] Sony made strategic investments in 2020 and 2021, beginning with 250 million US dollars announced in July 2020.[8] In February 2024 The Walt Disney Company announced a 1.5 billion US dollar investment for an equity stake, paired with a plan to build a persistent games and entertainment universe connected to Fortnite; the deal valued Epic at about 22.5 billion US dollars.[4][9] Kirkbi, the holding company behind the LEGO Group, also holds a stake following a 2022 partnership.[1]
Virtual and augmented reality
Unreal Engine and XR
Unreal Engine is one of the most widely used engines for building VR and AR applications, alongside Unity. Epic supports immersive development primarily through OpenXR, the cross-platform API for VR and AR devices managed by the Khronos Group. Epic was among the companies that formed the OpenXR working group, and Unreal Engine added support for the standard as it matured.[2] Unreal Engine 4.27, released in 2021, brought the engine's OpenXR plugin to a production-ready state, letting a single project target multiple headsets, and Unreal Engine 5 continued to use OpenXR as the default XR framework.[10] The engine's VR template ships configured for OpenXR so that the same logic runs across compatible VR and AR devices.[11]
Unreal Engine has also been used in mixed reality and immersive production beyond games, including virtual production for film and television and architectural and industrial visualization, areas where its real-time rendering is applied to VR and AR workflows.[11]
Epic's own VR titles
Epic developed several VR projects to demonstrate Unreal Engine on early consumer headsets. The Showdown cinematic, shown in 2014, was followed by the Bullet Train demo in 2015, a free Oculus Rift experience for the Oculus Touch controllers that showcased gunplay, time-slowing, and catching bullets in the air.[3] Those mechanics were expanded into Robo Recall, a free first-person shooter released for the Oculus Rift on March 1, 2017. Oculus funded the game so that Epic could release it at no cost, and Epic treated it as a showcase for Unreal Engine's VR capabilities, building parts of it with the engine's in-headset VR Editor.[3][12] A standalone version, Robo Recall: Unplugged, was ported by Drifter Entertainment and released for the Oculus Quest on May 21, 2019.[13]
Metaverse and Fortnite
Sweeney has repeatedly described Epic's long-term goal as building an open "Metaverse," a persistent, interconnected set of virtual worlds, and has framed Fortnite as a step toward it.[4] In 2023 Epic released Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), a desktop tool that lets creators build and publish their own experiences inside Fortnite using Unreal Engine tools.[1] The 2024 Disney agreement was described by both companies as creating an interoperable universe connected to Fortnite, drawing on Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars properties.[4][9] While much of this work targets flat screens rather than headsets, it reflects Epic's positioning around persistent shared 3D spaces that overlap with VR and AR concepts.
Acquisitions
Epic has acquired several companies whose technology supports its engine, content, and 3D capture work.
| Company | Year | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Psyonix | 2019 | Developer of Rocket League[1] |
| Quixel | 2019 | Photogrammetry-based 3D asset library (Megascans)[1] |
| Capturing Reality | 2021 | Developer of RealityCapture photogrammetry software[1] |
| Sketchfab | 2021 | Online 3D model platform[1] |
| Harmonix | 2021 | Music game developer (Rock Band)[1] |
| Mediatonic | 2021 | Developer of Fall Guys[1] |
The Quixel, Capturing Reality, and Sketchfab acquisitions added 3D scanning, asset, and content tools that are used to build environments for real-time applications, including VR and AR.[1]
Current status
As of 2026 Epic Games remains a privately held company led by Tim Sweeney, with Unreal Engine and Fortnite as its main products. The current stable release of Unreal Engine is version 5.7, released in November 2025.[14] The company continues to develop the engine, the Epic Games Store, and Fortnite, and has signaled that future engine work and its metaverse plans will center on connecting Unreal Engine-powered worlds.[14][4]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 "Epic Games". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Khronos Releases OpenXR 1.0 Specification Establishing a Foundation for the AR and VR Ecosystem". 2019-07-29. https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-releases-openxr-1.0-specification-establishing-a-foundation-for-the-ar-and-vr-ecosystem.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Epic Reveals 'Robo Recall': A Free Arcade Shooter For Oculus Touch". 2016-10-06. https://www.uploadvr.com/epic-announces-robo-recall/.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Template:Cite news
- ↑ "Largest music concert in a videogame". https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/563742-largest-music-concert-in-a-videogame.
- ↑ Template:Cite news
- ↑ "Tencent acquired 40% of Epic Games for $330m". https://mcvuk.com/business-news/publishing/tencent-acquired-40-of-epic-games-for-330m/.
- ↑ "Sony Corporation Form 6-K (FY2020)". https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000313838/000115752320000964/a52247120.htm.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Template:Cite news
- ↑ "Unreal Engine Improves OpenXR Support, Now Production-Ready". 2021-08-20. https://www.uploadvr.com/unreal-engine-openxr-production-ready/.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 "VR Template in Unreal Engine". https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/vr-template-in-unreal-engine.
- ↑ "Robo Recall Review". 2017-03-01. https://roadtovr.com/robo-recall-review/.
- ↑ "How a Seattle VR studio helped bring Epic Games' 'Robo Recall' to the new Oculus Quest headset". 2019-05-21. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/seattle-vr-studio-helped-bring-epic-games-robo-recall-new-oculus-quest-headset/.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Unreal Engine 5.7 is now available". 2025-11-12. https://www.unrealengine.com/news/unreal-engine-5-7-is-now-available.