Epic Games now worth $28.7B after funding from Sony

[Jumballi]

Summary

 

After another successful round of funding, Epic Games is now valued at 28.7 Billion Dollars. All the investments add up to another 1 Billion Dollars, with the headline investment being a 200 Million Dollar investment from Sony. Other investment partners include Appaloosa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, GIC, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Park West, KKR, AllianceBernstein, Altimeter, Franklin Templeton, and Luxor Capital.

 

Quotes

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“[The investment] builds on the already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces their shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services,” Epic Games said.

 

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"This round includes an additional $200m strategic investment from Sony Group Corporation," Epic wrote, "which builds on the already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces their shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services."

 

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Epic is betting big on the so-called "metaverse," an informal term used to describe a collaborative and immersive virtual world. Fortnite has hosted massive virtual concerts with artists like Travis Scott and Marshmello, for example.

 

My thoughts

While not without controversy, Epic has quickly raised up to the gaming elites in a few short years and are starting to show they might have it in them to last. While many of the articles focus on Fornite and the other popular games epic has acquired these past few years, I suspect that these investments are more focused on Epic's two very much larger and more important ventures, their Unreal Engine and Epic Games Store.

Unreal Engine has been gaining significant traction as a versatile tool for major Hollywood production companies. 

 

Personally, I've long suspected that Sony, being just a console manufacturer and not the engine developer and having 0 control over the PC market(the operating system and API being controlled by Microsoft), has been eyeing up acquiring Epic in it's entirety after the Epic Games Store gains enough traction, to either provide a similar value for Playstation gamers like Xbox's "Play Anywhere" selling point. As console's future becomes more uncertain, being able to go toe to toe with Microsoft on Windows will be more important than ever.

 

Sources

https://www.gematsu.com/2021/04/sony-group-corporation-invests-another-200-million-in-epic-games

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-04-13-epic-games-secures-usd1bn-funding-including-usd200m-from-sony

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/13/fortnite-creator-epic-games-valuation-jumps-to-29-billion.html

https://www.polygon.com/22381613/epic-games-valuation-billion-sony-stake-ownership-funding-round-metaverse-statement

 

[jagdtigger]

They are busy bribing other devs/studios to lock their game into their shitty store that no-one cares about......

[Mark Kaine]

And yet, some people in the other thread basically declared them dead already. 

 

10 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

bribing other devs/studios to lock their game into their shitty store that no-one cares about......

Yes, yes sure, but it's all about the numbers,  they want to grow their shitty store at all costs... and it does make sense... lots of people who are in for the free games will stick around,  plus it's simply marketing,  market penetration. 

 

It's marketing,  literally,  which costs money,  and is necessary.  So in a way it's pretty clever i must admit. 

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

And yet, some people in the other thread basically declared them dead already. 

 

Yes, yes sure, but it's all about the numbers,  they want to grow their shitty store at all costs... and it does make sense... lots of people who are in for the free games will stick around,  plus it's simply marketing,  market penetration. 

 

It's marketing,  literally,  which costs money,  and is necessary.  So in a way it's pretty clever i must admit. 

I think there would be a huge difference between epic being dead and their game store being dead. Currently they are losing money on the epic game store so its not really far fetched to think that the store is a failure. As for them going away I would find that hard to believe as unreal engine and fortnite are both products that will be making them alot of money for the foreseeable future.