We all know about the Fortnite. Most sold video games till date. Fortnite battle royale was created by none other than Epic games. Epic games Inc has launched many games till dare but the most popular game is Fortnite. Company has launched many games like Fire Fight, ZZT, Unreal, Infinity Blade, shadow complex, Bullstrom and off course Fortnite.
Epic games not only offer video games but many services as well. The services provided by the company are Epic games Inc Store, Epic online service, Unreal Engine.
So let’s know about Epic games in detail.
Epic Games Inc History –
Epic games Epic Games Inc is an American video game and software developer and publisher company based in North Carolina. Epic games Inc was found by Tim Sweeney in 1991. The first game was released in 1991 with the name ZZT.
The company was named Epic Mega Games, Inc in 1992. They moved headquarters to Carry in 1999, the studio name was simplified to Epic Games. Epic games Inc has over 1000+ employees in 2020.
Epic games develop the Unreal engine, a commercially available game engine which also power their internally developed games.
Tencent acquired 48% outstanding stake equating to 40% of total epic games in 2012. In 2017Epic games launched Fortnite battle royale, from which company received many investments that enabled the expansion of it’s unreal engine. Company also offered esports events for Fortnite and launched the Epic games store. As of 2020, the valuation of Epic games is nearly 17 billion USD.
Games of Epic Games –
Initially company was known for its games. ZZT developed by founder Tim Sweeney, various shareware titles including Jazz Jackrabbit and Epic Pinball, the unreal engine video game series. Epic games launched the Gears of Wars -which was later purchased by Microsoft games and The Coalition.
Product and Services of Epic Games Inc –
Unreal engine –
The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. Although initially developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully used in a variety of other genres, including platformers, fighting games, and other RPGs. Written in C++, the Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of platforms.
The latest release is Unreal Engine 4, which launched in 2014 under a subscription model. Since 2015, it can be downloaded for free, with its source code available on GitHub. Epic allows for its use in commercial products based on a royalty model, typically asking developers for 5% of revenues from sales, though with the success of Fortnite, which has become a testbed for Unreal Engine for Epic, Epic waives this fee for developers that publish their games through their Store, and more recently for revenues up through the first US$1 million. Company has announced Unreal Engine 5 to be released by late-2021.
The first-generation Unreal Engine was developed by Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games. Having created editing tools for the shareware games ZZT (1991) and Jill of the Jungle (1992), Sweeney began writing the engine in 1995 for the production of a game that would later become a first-person shooter known as Unreal.
Epic Game Store –
Epic announced its own c Games Store, an open digital storefront for games, on December 4, 2018, which launched a few days later with The Game Awards 2018 presentation. Differing from Valve’s Steam storefront, which takes 30% of revenues (30/70 revenue-sharing agreement) from the sale of a game, the Epic Game Store will take 12%, as well as foregoing the 5% for games developed in the Unreal Engine, anticipating that these lower revenue-sharing agreements will draw developers to it.
Epic Online Services –
Epic Online Services is a free SDK based on Epic’s Fortnite code that allows developers to implement cross-platform play features in their games, including matchmaking, friends list, leader boards, and achievements, with support for Windows, mac OS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android systems. It was first released for all in May 2020.
Litigation with Silicon Knights –
On July 19, 2007, Canadian game studio Silicon Knights sued Epic Games for failure to “provide a working game engine”, causing the Ontario-based game developer to “experience considerable losses”. The suit alleged that company was “sabotaging” Unreal Engine 3 licensees. Epic’s licensing document stated that a working version of the engine would be available within six months of the Xbox 360 developer kits being released.
Silicon Knights claimed that Epic not only missed this deadline, but that when a working version of the engine was eventually released, the documentation was insufficient. The game studio also claimed Epic had withheld vital improvements to the game engine, claiming they were game-specific, while also using licensing fees to fund the development of its own titles rather than the engine itself.
In August 2007, Epic Games counter-sued Silicon Knights, alleging the studio was aware when it signed on that certain features of Unreal Engine 3 were still in development and that components would continue to be developed and added as Epic completed work on Gears of War.
Video Games –
Epic games has released many games till date. The very first game ZZT was launched in 1991 by the developer of Epic games Tim Sweeny. Other popular games from this video game giant is are Fortnite battle royale, Jazz Jackrabbit, Infinity Blade, Dauntless, Infinity Blade 2, gear of war 3 and shadow complex. Let’s know about these games in detail.
ZZT –
ZZT is an action-adventure puzzle video game developed by Potomac Computer Systems and released for MS-DOS in October 1991. The game was designed by Tim Sweeney and took roughly nine months to develop, including the game’s scripting language, ZZT-oop. The name was thought to be an acronym for “Zoo of Zero Tolerance”, but Sweeney actually picked that name so it would be listed last alphabetically on the software catalog. ZZT was followed by a sequel, Super ZZT, in 1992.
Jazz Jackrabbit –
Jazz Jackrabbit is a video game trilogy featuring the eponymous character of Jazz Jackrabbit, a green anthropomorphic hare, who fights with his turtle nemesis, Devan Shell, in a science fiction parody of the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare. Created by Arjan Brussee and Cliff Bleszinski and developed by Epic Games Inc, the series debuted on the IBM PC in 1994 with Jazz Jackrabbit. The series consists of two computer games and a handheld console game.
Infinity Blade –
Infinity Blade is an action role-playing game developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games and released through the Apple app store on December 9, 2010. It was the first iOS video game to run on the Unreal Engine. In the game, the unnamed player character fights a series of one-on-one battles in a derelict castle to face the immortal God King. When in battle, players swipe the screen to attack and parry, and tap the screen to dodge and block enemy attacks. Upon defeat, the player restarts the game as the character’s descendant with the same items and experience level.
Infinity Blade II –
Infinity Blade II is an action role playing game for the iOS mobile devices developed by Chair Entertainment and released through the Apple App Store. The game was the sequel to Infinity Blade by the same developers.
Infinity Blade II was announced on October 4, 2011 during the Apple iPhone 4S Presentation Keynote. It was subsequently released on December 1, 2011. The game featured enhanced graphics and a storyline continuing from the novel Infinity Blade: Awakening.
A sequel, Infinity Blade III, was released on September 18, 2013.
Dauntless –
Dauntless is a free-to-play action role-playing video game developed by Phoenix Labs. The game initially launched in beta in May 2018 for Microsoft Windows. An early access version launched on May 21, 2019 for PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, including full support for cross-platform play, and was fully released for those platforms on September 26, 2019. A Nintendo Switch version was released on December 10, 2019.
Gears of War –
Gears of War or simply known as Gears, is a video game franchise created by Epic Games, developed and managed by The Coalition, and owned and published by Xbox Game Studios. The series focuses on the conflict between humanity, the subterranean reptilian hominids known as the Locust Horde, and their mutated counterparts, the Lambent. The franchise consists of six third-person shooter video games, which has also been supplemented by a comic book series and five novels.
Shadow Complex –
Shadow Complex is a platform-adventure video game developed by Chair Entertainment in association with and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 in 2009.
The game follows Jason and his girlfriend Claire, out to explore some caverns. When Claire goes missing, he finds a massive underground complex with soldiers and high-end technology. Jason must rescue Claire and discover the plot behind the faction operating the complex. Inspired by the Metroid series, Shadow Complex is a style game where the player controls Jason through the underground complex, defeating hostile forces, and finding various power-ups that enable further exploration of the complex. The original script of Shadow Complex was written by Peter David.
Criticism from Users –
Since the partial investment by the Chinese company Tencent, some consumers have become wary of Epic Games’ reliability and use of their data, particularly in relationship with the Epic Games Store. These concerns have generally been connected to broader issues of general distrust of Chinese players and sinophobia among some Western video game players, and Epic has stated that Tencent does not have access to any of this private data nor provides this to the Chinese government.
Epic games Inc has provided us many memorable games and Fortnite is unforgettable. Epic games Inc has provided many services to improve users’ experience. We all should thank Epic Games for providing us such memorable games. Epic Games Inc all video games are available across Xbox, PS and PC. Epic games all video games are really good to play. Epic Games Inc has created a lot of games keeping in mind the need and choice of gamers. So download the game which you find suits your taste best and play and create memories with friends. I would suggest you to definitely try Fortnite battle royale and Iron blade. I’m confident that games will not disappoint you at all.
References –
Epic games Wikipedia – link here
Epic games official website – link here
Epic games app store – link here
ZZT Wikipedia – link here
Top game companies – link here
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