Fortnite of Epic Games – Tencent 40% ownership
Epic Games owns video game developer Chair Entertainment and cloud-based software developer Cloudgine, and operates eponymous sub-studios in Seattle, England, Berlin, Yokohama and Seoul. Key personnel at Epic Games include chief executive officer Tim Sweeney, lead programmer Steve Polge and art director Chris Perna.[5][6][7] Tencent acquired a 40% stake in the company in 2012, after Epic Games realized that the video game industry was heavily developing towards the games as a service model.
No Fortnite, No PUBG in China The Chinese government’s newly set-up Online Ethics Review Committee (OERC) has reportedly put Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) on the list of banned games in the country for failing to promote the “correct” values. The OERC explained that the games that were put on the list promoted violence and the indecent depiction of female characters. In a sense, OERC’s stance is no different than that of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which recently decided that inclusion of esports into the games would be premature as most titles were seen as violent and not in… Read more »
ames as a Service and Tencent acquisition (2012–present) Coupled with their desire to move away from being beholden to a publisher, Epic Games observed that the video game industry was shifting to a games as a service model (GaaS). Sweeney stated “There was an increasing realization that the old model wasn’t working anymore and that the new model was looking increasingly like the way to go.”[20] In an attempt to gain more GaaS experience, they made an agreement with Chinese Tencent, who had several games under their banner (including Riot Games’ League of Legends) operating successfully as games as a… Read more »
Epic Games, which had been valued at around US$825 million at the time of Tencent’s acquisition, was estimated to be worth US$4.5 billion in July 2018 due to Fortnite Battle Royale, and expected to surpass US$8.5 billion by the end of 2018 with projected growth of the game.[58] Due to the success of Fortnite, Epic announced it would be ending support for Paragon, its other free-to-play title, to focus on supporting Fortnite.