Epic Games raises a billion to develop its metaverse

Founder Tim Sweeney's economic theory goes far beyond just video games. Sony among the companies that have invested in the Fortnite developer

(Photo: Epic Games) A ​​billion dollars to support the long-term vision of the "metaverse" of Epic Games: thus the production house known for global success Fortnite announced the latest funding raised by investors, including Sony. The Japanese multinational has invested $ 200 million in the company led and founded by Tim Sweeney, whose valuation has now risen to $ 28.7 billion, up 66% from last August. Back then, the previous round had delivered 1.7 billion dollars to the coffers of Epic Games, of which 250 million from Sony.

The company focuses on a diversified business strategy: “The investment will help to accelerate our work on building connected social experiences in Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys, empowering developers and creators with Unreal Engine, Epic Online Services and the Epic Store, ”Sweeney explained. The Unreal game engine, for example, has been used in several video games and for the film industry, but the biggest challenge is the so-called "metaverse", a virtual and immersive world built collaboratively by the users themselves, well beyond the simple gaming, which even Microsoft and Roblox want to bet on.

"It will be a sort of 3D social media in real time in which, instead of exchanging messages and images asynchronously, we interact together in a virtual world, sharing gaming or social experiences", he explained in a 'interviews Sweeney himself who has obtained the support of investors such as Blackrock, Kkr, Altimeter, Luxor, who have financed Epic Games. A year ago, for example, rapper Travis Scott held a virtual live concert, which was attended by 12.3 million players on Fortnite at the same time.

But Sweeney also imagines an economic model of the new world: "The other critical element of the Metaverse is that it is not built only by a mega company, but it will be the result of the creative work of millions of people, it will be a highly participatory means as we have not yet seen". An open platform "bigger than any company", where "the best creators can be successful and can really profit from their work and grow the businesses around it". A model opposed to the “closed” one of companies like Facebook (“artificial”) or hybrid of YouTube, which reserves a limited part of the profits to creators. "And other companies are not growing".

Epic Games is in litigation against Apple and Google, which it asks to accept third party payment services on Play and Apple Store, from where Fortnite has been withdrawn. The two giants have reduced the payment fees for developers, from 30 to 15% on user purchases, based on certain income thresholds, but the lawsuit continues. Next month Epic Games will be in court in the antitrust trial against Cupertino.


Finance - 4 hours ago

Coinbase's stock market debut pushes bitcoin value

adsJSCode ("nativeADV1", [[2,1]], "true", "1", "native", "read- more "," 1 "); Finance - 8 hours ago

Are NFTs a Big Bubble?

adsJSCode ("nativeADV2", [[2,1]], "true", "2", "native", "read-more", "2"); Music - 9 hours ago

What awaits you today at the Wired Next Fest 2021 dedicated to entertainment

Topics

Finance Fortnite Virtual reality Videogame globalData.fldTopic = "Finance, Fortnite , Virtual Reality, Videogame "

You may also be interested in

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.