Tim Sweeney has been one of the personalities that have never been afraid of taking on any giants from the tech industry. Sweeney is known for competing with several gaming giants and tech companies head-on. Over time, he has also worked hard in order to bring his company more towards independence.
According to the latest reports, the battle royale blockbuster game is known as “Fortnite” has achieved a new user base. It has been revealed that the game now has more than 15 million active users playing through its servers. The game has also become a hub for fans to gather and make an entire universe of fandom.
In recent years, the Founder and CEO at Epic Games, Sweeney has many times challenged other gaming giants and companies by creating and providing players with its own gaming catalog.
Later on, the platform went onto developing and launching Unreal Engine, which is known as proprietary software. The Unreal Engine software is used to facilitate the making of video games. Once developed, the games are licensed out to other animators and developers.
Despite taking several challenges head-on, the founder of Epic Games is now getting ready to face the biggest challenge of his life. In the company’s 30 years of experience, this is going to happen for the first time that Epic Games is going to challenge Google and Apple.
It has been reported that Epic Games is going to file a lawsuit against Google and Apple, with the aim to reshape the digital economy’s future.
Epic’s frustration and rivalry with Google and Apple is not anything that emerged out of the blue. The company’s feud with both companies had been building up for the past three years. Sweeney stated that ever since the launch and worldwide recognition of Fortnite, the company felt like it was out of breath.
It was back in 2017 when Epic Games launched Fortnite and the game ended up becoming a huge success. When the game first was first launched, the game cost $40 to players who wanted to download it through the Epic client.
However, the company took a huge risk and ended up making the game free-to-play. The developers changed the model of the game and made it free-to-play. It was decided that the revenue will be based on the digital items that the users will have to pay in order to acquire.
The gamble made by Epic Games finally paid off and the company successfully generated annual revenue of $1.8 billion in 2019 and $1.3 billion in 2020 respectively. However, the game was paying a huge chunk of their revenue over to the Google and Apple application stores.
Epic was reportedly paying a 30% cut of all the in-app purchases that were made through the particular users’ accounts to Apple and Google respectively.
It is being said that if Epic Games ends up winning the lawsuit against the tech giants, it will end up making a huge fortune.