Founded in 1889 (over 100 years ago!), Nintendo is probably the oldest and most famous gaming company. They may have started small by making playing cards, but today, of course, they are an international juggernaut that is as famous for its beloved games as it is for its unique game consoles. Personally, they hold a special place in my heart, not only because I grew up with the NES, but also because the first game I made was for Nintendo`s GameBoy Color. Thanks for all the memories, Nintendo! I know I`m just a small voice and a small consumer, but how these companies treat their employees is important when it comes to spending my money. Ubisoft has a fist full of games coming out in the coming weeks and I`d be damned if I bought a single until the staff made it clear that the farm has been cleaned up. We live in a time when unions have all but disappeared, but that doesn`t mean they don`t have room for unity. Do they care? While Naughty Dog can require a lot of overtime (developing critically acclaimed games isn`t for the faint of heart), they try to compensate for that by offering employees a generous benefits package that includes a chance for additional pay bonuses. (Not to mention free lunches for employees who work late to the office.) In February 1999, Epic MegaGames announced that they had moved their headquarters to a new location in Cary, North Carolina and would henceforth be called simply Epic Games. [15] Rein explained, “Unreal was first developed by developers scattered around the world, eventually the team came together to finish the game, and that`s when the real magic began. The move to North Carolina centralizes Epic and brings all of the company`s talented developers under one roof. [15] In addition, Sweeney explained that the “mega” part of the name was dropped because they no longer wanted to pretend to be a large company, as was the original intent of the name when it came to a one-man team. The next game, Unreal Tournament, was critically acclaimed the same year,[16] when the studio had 13 employees.[7] In 1996, Epic MegaGames produced an isometric shareware shooter called Fire Fight, developed by Polish studio Chaos Works.[17] It was published by Electronic Arts. [13] In 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 to a series of Unreal games.[14] The company also began licensing the core technology, the Unreal Engine, to other game developers. Epic announced its own Epic Games Store on December 4, 2018, an open digital storefront for games, which debuted a few days later with the presentation of The Game Awards 2018. Unlike Valve`s Steam storefront, which gets 30% of the revenue (30/70 revenue sharing deal) from selling a game, the Epic Game Store will take 12% and forgo the 5% for games developed in the Unreal Engine in the hope that these lower revenue-sharing deals will attract developers. [96] [97] Headquarters: Santa Monica, California, United States Type of business: Developer of proprietary games Most famous games: Uncharted, The Last of Us, Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter Job Openings: www.naughtydog.com/careers Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded in 1991 by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems and was originally located in his childhood home in Potomac, Maryland. After its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992, with Mark Rein remaining vice president of the company to this day. When the studio moved its headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio`s name was simplified to Epic Games. Fortnite`s commercial success has allowed Epic to make several changes to its other product offerings. In July 2018, the Company reduced its 30% revenue reduction for assets sold on the Unreal Engine marketplace from 30% to 12%. [59] Epic launched the Epic Games Store digital storefront to compete with services such as Steam and GOG.com, not only seeing a 12% drop in revenue from the industry standard of 30%, but also eliminating the 5% discount for games using the Unreal engine sold through the storefront.
[60] However, the company also refocused its development efforts to provide more support for Unreal and Fortnite by ending support for Paragon[61] and Unreal Tournament. [62] The man in charge of the company that makes “Fortnite” is now worth more than $7 billion. Last month, 10.7 million people signed up for a virtual Marshmello concert on Fortnite. According to Business Insider, more than 250 million players have registered accounts. Players have been building communities in video games like Minecraft for years, but Fortnite`s free-to-play battle royale gameplay has gone viral in recent years. Already since 2017, Tim Sweeney had questioned the need for digital storefronts such as Valve`s Steam, Apple`s iOS App Store and Google Play to reduce a 30% revenue share, arguing that given current content distribution rates and other required factors, an 8% reduction in revenue should be enough to operate any digital storefront profitably. [132] When Epic introduced Fortnite Battle Royale to mobile devices, the company initially offered a sideloaded package for Android systems to bypass the Google Play Store, but eventually turned it into a store app. [133] [134] [135] The game now has over 200 million players and is available on seven different gaming platforms: iPhone, Android, PC, Mac, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
Best of all, the game can be played on all of these platforms – a first in the world of video games. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, said his company could be the next Facebook or Google, pointing to the video game company`s explosive growth of Fortnite. Epic Online Services is a free SDK based on Epic`s Fortnite code that allows developers to implement cross-platform gaming features in their games, including matchmaking, friend lists, leaderboards, and achievements, with support for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android systems. It was first published in May 2020 for everyone. [73] As a result, on November 7, 2012, the court ordered Silicon Knights to destroy all game code derived from Unreal Engine 3, as well as all information from Epic`s licensed Unreal Engine documentation areas, and to allow Epic Games access to the company`s servers and other equipment to ensure that those elements were removed. In addition, the studio was ordered to recall and destroy all unsold copies of games created with Unreal Engine 3 code, including Too Human, X-Men Destiny, The Sandman, The Box/Ritualyst, and Siren in the Maelstrom (the last three titles were projects that were never released or even officially announced). [130] Epic Games develops the Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine that also powers its in-house developed video games such as Fortnite and the Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade series. In 2014, Unreal Engine was named “Most Successful Video Game Engine” by Guinness World Records. [4] Epic and People Can Fly created a final game in the Gears of War series that served as a prequel to the other games, Gears of War: Judgement, released in 2013. At the time, Epic had considered developing a fourth major title for Gears of War, but estimated that its budget would be at least $100 million. In addition, they had proposed the idea of a multiplayer version of Gears of War that would include improved versions of maps based on user feedback, similar to the concept behind Unreal Tournament, but Microsoft rejected this idea.[21] Epic recognized the difficulty of sticking to a publisher`s business goals and began relocating the company. [20] In November 2019, Epic acquired Quixel, the world`s largest library of photogrammetric assets that creates 3D models of objects based on high-definition real-world photography.
Epic plans to open up Quixel`s existing template library to Unreal Engine users, while Quixel employees will continue to grow their assets within Epic. [92] The company acquired Cubic Motion, a studio that provides highly detailed digital facial animations for movies and video games, in March 2020. [93] Epic used its windfall to support its products.