Our company is now financially sound; Gamers gravitate towards live service multiplayer

Epic Games made some important announcements for game developers at Unreal Fest Seattle 2024, including the unveiling of Unreal Engine 5’s new features and the reduction of licensing fees for games released concurrently with other stores on the Epic Games Store.

But before all these announcements, Tim Sweeney, founder, CEO and majority shareholder of Epic, addressed the audience with an interesting speech. First, he noted that after last year’s layoffs, Epic was now in a solid financial position and had recorded record numbers for Fortnite and the store. Second, Sweeney discussed the growing importance of live multiplayer gaming in an increasingly complex gaming market where even big games could struggle.

I’m pleased to report now that Epic is financially sound and that Fortnite and the Epic Game Store have achieved new records for concurrency and success. Fortnite reached 110 million monthly active users last holiday, an all-time record. And it’s all happening in the context of a games business that’s changing rapidly in ways we’ve only seen a handful of times in our lives as game developers. It’s a generational change. One of the things we’re seeing right now is that a lot of games are being released with big budgets and not selling nearly as well as expected, while other games are growing incredibly fast.

What we’re seeing is the real trend is that players are gravitating towards the really big games where they can play with more of their friends. This is a manifestation of Metcalfe’s Law, the idea that the value of a network, game, or social experience grows in proportion to the number of friends you can connect with. In the gaming world, that means you and your friends get together and play games, voice chat, go to concerts, and do all the other cool virtual things online.

Some people call this trend the metaverse. We don’t all agree on what that means. Some people, when they hear the word Metaverse, think of what Facebook is doing with VR and now AR. Some people use the metaverse to describe everything they don’t like about the current Fortnite season. But when you look at what’s happening in the world of Fortnite, it’s new and exciting and something that’s never been done on this scale in the history of entertainment, with an original story that evolves with original content and on which all brands in the world also take part. Musicians reaching users, Disney and Star Wars and others coming together to create a world-class entertainment experience that is constantly evolving and alive, and that’s what we believe the future of gaming is all about.

While Sweeney is right when he says that more and more gamers are appreciating the live multiplayer experience, it’s also true that several major live multiplayer games have greatly disappointed. Examples include Crucible, Babylon’s Fall, Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and most recently Concord. Not even IPs as powerful as Marvel and DC were enough to prevent these failures. While Epic may not be interested in making another single-player game for now, many other developers are certainly interested, and they will certainly succeed if they create a high-quality experience.

In other Epic news, Sweeney’s company just sued Google and Samsung over their autoblocking feature.