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Epic Games makes the hit video game Fortnite and the Unreal Engine software that other studios use to build games and virtual worlds.
Epic Games is a video game company best known for Fortnite, a free-to-play battle royale that became a global cultural phenomenon after launching in 2017. Players drop onto an island, build structures, and fight until one player or team is left standing. The game is free to download, but Epic sells in-game cosmetic items — skins, emotes, and battle passes — and that is where most of its money comes from. Fortnite also hosts concerts and brand events inside the game itself, turning it into something closer to a social space than a traditional shooter.
Epic also owns Unreal Engine, a piece of software that other developers license to build their own games and 3D worlds. Movie studios use it for virtual production on shows like *The Mandalorian*, and carmakers and architects use it for design visualization. The engine brings in royalty revenue when games built on it succeed, and it gives Epic a strategic foothold far beyond Fortnite. The company also runs the Epic Games Store, which takes a smaller cut of game sales than Valve's Steam — 12% versus 30% — a deliberate challenge to the industry standard. Epic's biggest fight is with platform owners. In 2020 it deliberately broke Apple's App Store rules to protest the 30% cut that Apple takes on in-app purchases, triggering a lawsuit and getting Fortnite removed from the App Store. The legal battle has dragged on for years, with mixed rulings, and it has shaped how the whole industry talks about app store fees. Epic also owns stakes in other gaming and tech ventures and has raised outside investment from Sony and Tencent, the latter of which holds a significant minority position.
The company is private, so its financials are not fully public, but Fortnite has generated billions of dollars since launch, and Epic's valuation has at times exceeded $30 billion. Its core vulnerability is dependence on a single hit game: Fortnite drove a huge surge in revenue, and when player interest cooled in 2019, Epic had to diversify. Unreal Engine and the Epic Games Store are its hedges, and the long-running Apple and Google fights are a bet that controlling its own distribution is worth the cost.
Saved answer · last researched 4 Nov 2026