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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney opened the Unreal Fest Seattle event today with an update on news that included a blistering criticism of monopolistic platform owners.
Sweeney is a big proponent of open platforms and the open metaverse. In fact, he will talk about that subject in a virtual talk at our GamesBeat Next 2024 event on October 28-29 in San Francisco. (You can use this code for a 25% discount: gbn24dean). And so Sweeney continues to pressure the major platforms to give more favorable terms to game developers.
He started out on that front by giving a price cut for users of Unreal Engine 5, Epic’s tools for making games. For those who release games first or simultaneously on the Epic Games Store, Epic is cutting its royalty rate from 5% to 3.5% for Unreal developers.
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He noted that Epic is in better financial shape than it was a year ago, when Epic had to lay off a lot of staff. Sweeney said the company spent the last year rebuilding.
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“I’m happy to tell you now that the company is financially sound and that Fortnite and Epic Games Store hit new record records in concurrency and success,” he said.
Fortnite reached a peak last holiday season of 110 million monthly active users, and Sweeney said the Epic Games Store is seeing record success. He said the company has emphasized the shift toward large social games and the concept of the metaverse. The strategy includes unifying Unreal Engine 5’s high-end features with Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) to create Unreal Engine 6, aiming for easier, scalable game development.
He also noted the financial cushion that came from a $1.5 billion investment from Disney, which has teamed with Epic Games to create a Disney-based virtual world with all of Disney’s characters — interconnected with the world of Fortnite. He noted Epic’s small but important victory against Apple in court in the U.S. and in the regulatory arena in the European Union, enabling developers to promote alternative app stores without (too severe) penalties from Apple …