![]() They gave the game away for free and opened up its availability beyond consoles like Xbox or PlayStation, putting it on smartphones and tablets as well. They de-emphasized the plot and went all in on the battle-royale genre that was gaining in popularity. Then Epic changed course and created the new pay model that dominates the gaming industry today. It was still very much a traditional game, built around a story plot. The first version of the game was originally created in 2011, but it was different than the "Fortnite" of today. It allowed the company to escape what Sweeney described to The Wall Street Journal as a "groupthink" among gaming companies in California, where the vast majority of developers are located.īefore it became the most popular game in the world, the development of "Fortnite" was a slow burn. It was an added bonus that you could easily make a drive to either the mountains or ocean, an important factor for nature-loving Sweeney.īy choosing Cary-at that point a backwater in the gaming industry-Epic found another benefit. You could buy a house here on a game developer's salary, rather than be stuck in a one-bedroom apartment in California, Sweeney told the website Gamasutra in 2009. The team had looked around the country for a landing spot, before eventually settling on the Triangle because of its cost of living. First they moved to Raleigh, then to Cary in 2005, where they built their office off Crossroads Boulevard. It wasn't until 1999 that Epic made it to the Triangle, as a small group of game developers who had just finished working on a project in the suburbs of Toronto. He then started creating Unreal Engine, the software that is the backbone of his empire today. He was eventually awarded his degree the university said he didn't receive it in 1993 because of a "technical issue."īy then, he had already created one game, called "ZZT," and was selling copies at a steady clip. Then, at just the age of 20, having recently left the University of Maryland before graduating, his youthful passion for video games was turning into an actual business. "I love going off the trail and finding things that I think nobody's ever seen before," he said.įounded in 1991, the story of Epic began in the basement of Sweeney's parents' home in the affluent D.C. In the infrequent times he is not working, he said, you'll more than likely find him walking in the woods somewhere. His office uniform is described as a T-shirt and cargo pants and he says his favorite food is Bojangles' fried chicken. In the same interview, he is described as a "youthful" man who maintains an informal presence at work. So I lead a fairly simple life," he told The Wall Street Journal in a rare interview earlier this year. He has put that personal fortune to work buying up tens of thousands of acres of forest land in North Carolina, all of which he plans to preserve. 244 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world's richest people. His personal fortune, valued at $7.2 billion, ranks him at No. Over the past decade, he has become one of North Carolina's most prolific conservationists and largest private landowners. Outside of Epic, where he works long hours, Sweeney's interest seems to revolve around conservation. The most common place you'll find his thinking is in his preferred medium of Twitter, where he calls out tech giants like Google for monopolistic tendencies and vows to protect free expression on "Fortnite," even though a Chinese company owns a 40% stake in Epic. ![]() Sweeney, through his spokesperson at Epic, declined to be interviewed for this article. And, if you were to make it to the front desk, a stack of non-disclosure agreements would await your signature. ![]() You could drive by the growing Epic Games corporate campus in the eastern part of Cary, not far from Crossroads Shopping Center, and not even realize it was there. Yet, for most people, he remains an enigma.īoth Sweeney and his company remain private most of the time. That growth makes the company's founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, 49, one of the most influential business leaders in the country these days-and perhaps the world. More than 250 million people have now registered to play "Fortnite," and the game has brought in billions of dollars in revenue to the company, which now sports a valuation of $15 billion. Since releasing "Fortnite," one of the most popular video games on earth, the Cary-based game maker has upturned the video game industry, revolutionized the way a generation of kids play-and parents pay for-video games and supercharged its growth to become one of the most valuable private companies in the U.S. ![]()
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