I don't really like Fortnite, but I'm really really happy for Epic's success. PUBG was a flaming dumpster heap that only caught on because the Battle Royale mechanic is naturally fun and people were clamoring for that type of game. But it was an unqualified mess from a subpar developer, and that always annoyed me because gamers deserved better. Now Epic has been rescued from sliding into obscurity <i>and</i> they've got massive coffers to continue working on Unreal 4. Couldn't have worked out better.
Fortnite's pivot from failed co-op zombie game to... well, <i>this</i>... is incredible.<p>I would love to have experienced that office environment over that year. I can only imagine that the pivot was a "well, we already have most of the game. What can do we do with it?" hail Mary as they considered what to do short of closure.<p>I may also be misremembering how dire their situation was. But I thought it was quite dire.
I think it is commendable that Epic used some of this profit to change their Unreal Engine Marketplace rates in favour of the developers.
Similar to their store that is mentioned in the article, the revenue split is now 88/12.<p>This change will be applied retroactively to all past transactions [1].
My understanding is the split was previously 70/30 as common in other online stores—those should be some hefty payouts for some developers.
In my opinion this is going above and beyond and would make me feel good about supporting Epic through purchase of cosmetics in Fortnite if I played the game, for example.<p>EDIT: I previously mistakenly referred to the UE Marketplace as store, which is now at best misleading since they did launch a proper game store last month. Thanks to jsnell for catching this.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-announces-unreal-engine-marketplace-88-12-revenue-share" rel="nofollow">https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-announces-unrea...</a>
The interesting part of this article was that Epic intentionally circumvented Google Play Store and required Android users to download the launcher from its own website.
Hopefully this leads to more app developers skipping Google Play and launching solo. Of course most apps won't have the name recognition of Fortnite, but I can't imagine discover-ability inside of the Play Store is any better.<p>I got a new phone recently and had to re-download some apps; Imagine my shock when I opened Google Play and saw that it had become like Google search; crawling with ads for some of the worst, lowest-rung "apps", all of which appear to be some variant of Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. Who honestly wants to fork over 30% to Google for <i>that</i>?
Shame none of that is going towards UT development and Epic scrapped that project. Considering the state of the new Quake game I guess that's the end for Arena shooters.
Is anybody else bummed how Fortnite's success has drawn development away from the new Unreal Tournament? I don't care about Fortnite, I just want UT to continue to be updated. I don't think it's had an update since June.
Epic lied to Linux devs and stabbed us in the back. I have abandoned hundreds in marketplace assets and moved to godot because of all that money and still a refusal to address Linux as a platform for dev and shipping.
Tim Sweeney often complains about MS being a threat to PC gaming, yet there is still no Fortnite for Linux. Also, Epic store doesn't support Linux (yet?).
> Epic grossed a $3 billion profit for this year<p>What does this even mean? Net income? Top line gross profit (meaning minus COGS), which is normally like 80% GM for heavily software enabled businesses? Ugh, tech reporters.
I'm really happy they're so successful. My son loves it, and from my perspective it's "healthier" than more realistic games like Call of Duty (for his age, I mean. nothing inherently wrong with CoD). All that said, I really don't get the appeal. Although I come from a gaming history that values deep and lore-heavy CRPG & ARPG games. From that perspective I don't see a lot of depth to fortnite, where success seems driven by twitch reflexes and very similar end-games for most matches. That said I love the temporary special features they do. My son & I had a blast jetting around, sniping each other when rocket packs were available, and The infinity gauntlet tie-in was really fun. Anyway, good on Epic!
$3B profit doesn’t really seem consistent with $15B valuation. Tech companies these days seem valued at 20x revenue or more. Why would they bother raising $1.25B at that price?<p>I suppose Fortnite is a fad, so there is a pessimistic case to be made to cash in as much as possible.
Unreal Engine is honestly awesome. I recently purchased an AAA game called “DB FighterZ,” built on UE, and the game experience is top-notch.<p>It piqued my interest in game programming once again.
One of the best thing about Fortnite is EPIC porting back all the work and improvement to Unreal Engine, if any of those Unreal Engine Release note improvement seems crazy, since Fortnite it has been insane. And there are still many more to come.<p>At this stage Makes me wonder if Unreal Engine will ever get a major competitor for AAA games. Even Konami are ditching the Fox engine and moving to Unreal.
> ...has popularized the battle royale category — think Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games — almost single-handedly...<p>Almost single-handedly? This is a bizarre claim and it's like rewriting history.
All gaming companies could have made huge profits. Most game companies opted to be condescending and preach personal politics into peoples hobbies. It's not about fun but it's about education.