Epic Games’ wildly successful title, Fortnite, is currently in the midst of its first birthday celebration, and while players are uncovering birthday cakes within the game, the crew at Epic are blowing out billion-dollar candles thanks to title’s surge in popularity. $8 billion to be precise.
A Bloomberg analysis currently values Epic Games somewhere between $5 billion and $8 billion on its Billionaires Index, an exponential increase from the company’s $825 million dollar valuation in 2012.
The studio’s latest valuation factors in all facets of its business, including development and licensing of the Unreal Engine, but the large increase can be mostly attributed to the financial success of Fortnite. The game brought in $1 billion in in-game purchases alone since the launch of its free Battle Royale mode and is on track to bring in $2 billion this year. That number shouldn’t be hard to reach when the game’s daily mobile earnings regularly top $2 million.
Epic’s rise in value further explains its recent decision to scale back its take of Unreal Engine Marketplace sales from 30 percent to 12 percent and retroactively apply the decrease, greatly impacting the earnings of developers that use the engine.
Bloomberg further estimates that Epic could garner a price tag ranging from $7.5 billion to $14 billion if it were put up for sale, though CEO and newly christened billionaire Tim Sweeney is unlikely to put the studio on the market. For now, the North Carolina-based developer seems content to further curate their mega-hit and ride the crest of its financial wave to brand new heights.
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