The Story of Epic Games: How a Game Engine Conquered The Video Game Industry

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Hey whats up everybody, long time no see! I am back with another business documentary. I think this is my 10th video like this? Anyways, in this video I cover Epic Games. Epic games started out as a small computer consultation business (Potomac Computer Systems) that transitioned into a small video game development company, and eventually became a multi-billion dollar enterprise that is a titan of the video game industry.

This video is largely a documentary about Tim Sweeney and his path towards becoming a billionaire through the programming of Unreal Engine. I really enjoyed making this documentary and it felt good to be back making videos. Also, I liked making this one specifically because Tim Sweeney’s path to success had a couple years of failure and was more of a slow growth for nearly a decade before his company exploded.

Anyways, if you want to support me or my game where I use unreal engine, please checkout my other channel in the link down below

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Video game industry. What was once thought to be a tiny industry. Only for kids kids happy holidays from atari has now become one of the largest and fastest growing in the world.
As of 2019. The video game industry is valued at well over 100 billion dollars. And is bigger than both the film industry and music industry combined.
But the gaming business is not filled with a hundred different gaming companies each jockeying for position in the industry in reality. Only a handful of companies are responsible for nearly all of the revenue. That is produced from video games and one of these companies is still pretty much owned by one single person.
This is the story about how one man changed video games forever and created a titan of the video game industry. This is the story of epic games. Potter mac.
Maryland 1989. A 19 year old named tim sweeney was a busy mechanical engineering student at the university of maryland on weekends tim would travel back to his parents house in potomac maryland to keep in touch with both his family and his ibm personal computer on one of these weekends. He decided to open up his own personal computer consultation business.

Where he would help customers with any of their computer problems. He decided to call this new business pata mac computer systems named after his hometown. However after more than a year of very little success he decided to shut down the company and focus his weekends on something else.
Tim always knew he wanted to do something revolving around computers. So he ended up deciding that he would try to create a video game. However there was a problem even though tim was pretty much an expert with computers and computer programming.
There wasn’t a real roadmap or instruction manual on how to create video games at the time nor were there any game engines to help him start program in his first game. So tim sweeney ended up creating his own text editor in order to help him pro drem his first game from scratch. But then a light bulb went off what if he just made a video game out of the text editor itself so that’s what he did the initial text editor that tim made ended up becoming a game called z z t.
It was an action adventure puzzle. Game. That was released for ms.
Dos in october of 1991. The game took nine months to develop and when it was released it was met with some initial success. However this was not necessarily because of the game itself.

You see the game as ezt was the first video game that was ever developed using object oriented programming. Which made it very easy for other programmers to change the game or as it is known today mod the game so inadvertently tim sweeney’s text editor had become the first easily model game where normal computer users could create their own game. Within a game.
Soon. Zzt started making sweeny over 100 a day that is when he decided to make video game development. His full time career.
He renamed pata mac. Computer systems to epic megagames in order to try to have a standout name in the video game industry at the time. There were only a few companies that were making video games like apogee software and id software.
These companies had just recently released their massive hit games like duke nukem wolfenstein 3d. So tim sweeney had his work cut out for him initially tim brought on a handful of people to help him grow. The company one of which was mark raine.
Who according to tim was vital to the initial growth of epic games because of the business deals. He was able to bring in early on in the company’s history by the end of its first year epic megagames. Had 20 employees and had produced six games and by the end of the second year.

They had 30 employees and produced in nine more games. The company was growing fairly quickly yet their game changing product was yet to be released in 1995. Sweeney began writing code for a first person shooter game.
However he began building this game with a brand new idea in mind. He decided to program a game engine that would not only work for his game. But could also work for variety of other future games that way this game engine could be licensed out to other game developers to bring in additional revenue for the company now the creation of this game.
Engine was a big risk for sweeney. Because building a game engine like this would take years to program. And the engine might not even be that good at the end of it so by starting this project.
He was placing a big bet on himself. And his ability to program. And after three years of programming.
Tim sweeney’s video game. Called unreal. Was released to the world.

And so was his game engine that he called unreal engine within two weeks. The game unreal became the best selling game in the country and received an overwhelmingly positive reception by gamers. It was described as having revolutionary visuals.
While at the same time receiving praise for its good. Plot. Atmosphere and gameplay unreal ended up making.
The company around 60 million dollars throughout its lifetime and for a few weeks actually competed with starcraft as the best selling game in the world. However this would pale in comparison to what the unreal engine would do for the company. The engine that sweeney spent three years programming was praised by nearly everyone in the industry.
Including competitors. Such as john carmack. Who was the creator of games like doom and quake.
And this praise was for a multitude of reasons like how the engine was able to use textures its lighting quality and the ability to export games to nearly every computer and console on the market. With just the click of a button. After its release unreal engine started being used by hit games like dust x.

The harry potter series the star trek games. Xcom and much more and because unreal engine was taking a small royalty on every game sold that used its engine epic games. Revenue started to explode and because of this massive.
Success sweeny began programming. The next versions of unreal engine. That would be suitable for the next generation of game consoles and this is the point where the gaming industry would change for in 2006 epic games.
Put all of its focus on making a new gaming franchise. They wanted this game to truly display the power of their newest version of unreal engine. So they struck a deal with microsoft to develop a game specifically for the xbox 360 epic.
Wanted this game to be an online. Multiplayer shooter that young people could play with friends so that’s when they came up with the idea for gears of war immediately after its release sales for gears of war broke records. As that became the fastest selling xbox 360 game to reach 3 million copies sold and ended up selling almost 6 million copies.
Throughout its lifetime. The combination of its critical reception and its massive sales lured other game developers to the unreal engine. Platform.

Within a year of gears of wars. Release another massive game. Called bioshock.
Who was released to the public that used unreal engine. And i personally remember playing this game as a kid and the graphics were so revolutionary and lifelike that it was the first time i couldn’t tell the difference between a gameplay scene and a cutscene and after bioshock. There were a few other games that started using unreal engine.
Let me know if you’ve heard of any of them mass effect army of gears of war 2 mirror’s edge rainbow six vegas batman arkham asylum infinity blade mass effect. 2 batman arkham city dc universe online gears of war 3 mortal kombat borderlands 2 dishonored mass effect. 3 batman arkham origins bioshock infinite injustice gods among us and outlast unreal engines 2 and 3 were an overwhelming success that earned epic games.
A 330 million dollar investment. From 10 cent in 2012. Which valued at the games.
At over 700 million dollars. Despite this investment founder. Tim sweeney.

Still owned well over 50 percent of the company and maintained a nearly full control over its operations. And yes. Despite all of the success.
The biggest financial windfall was yet to come the publishing of unreal engine three came to an end with games like batman. Arkham knight assassin’s creed chronicles rocket league and goat simulator. A new influx of unreal engine 4 games.
Began to be created in 2016. With games like dead by daylight gears of war for street fighter. 5.
And warhammer. The release of unreal engine. 4.
Is what finally made epic games. A billion dollar company. But there was still one game in development that would take the world by storm on september 26th of 2017.

An online shooter game that was built and developed by epic games was released that game was fortnight and as we all know fortnight blew up and ended up drying in over two hundred and fifty a million players worldwide while generating over two billion dollars in revenue through microtransactions within the game. And yes. Even though a lot of people only know epic as the game company that produced fortnight.
It actually still makes the vast majority of its money from its other games that use unreal engine. I mean think about this soon after fortnight came out there were a ton of other popular games that used unreal engine like ark survival evolved ever space friday the 13th injustice to life a strange marvel vs capcom player unknowns battlegrounds psychonauts and a ton of other games that i won’t get into and because of the success of both fortnight and the hundreds of other popular games that use unreal engine epic games was able to get the largest investment in history for a video game company at 125 billion dollars for less than eight percent equity therefore valuing epic games at about fifteen billion dollars and yes tim sweeney still owns over fifty percent of the company so he still technically is the sole decision maker and true owner of epic games. Today.
Tim sweeney is worth over seven and a half billion dollars and yet still appears on unreal engine live streams and gaming conferences. A couple times a year today epic games is one of the largest video game developers in the world and is comparable to other giant developers such as ea ubisoft blizzard. 2k microsoft sony and nintendo and there may actually be someone that you know that is using unreal engine to develop with their own game that person well.
It’s me i’ve actually been developing my own open world rpg game called attica origins over the past few months. And if you want to know more about the game. And how you can support this channel or the game itself please subscribe to attica games.
As i’ve been posting videos. There pretty consistently for the past few months. Anyways stay tuned from my next to business documentary.
I really enjoy making these kinds of videos. So please hit that subscribe and like button down below. And i’ll see you guys next time music.
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