Did Sony buy Epic Games? Minority stake in Fortnite Developers by Sony explained

Sony has invested $250 million in exchange for a minority stake in Fortnite's developer company Epic Games. This deal reportedly translates to Sony acquiring 1.4 per cent interest in the game developer studio, taking Epic Games' valuation up to $17.86 billion. The Fortnite game developer studio has reportedly managed to raise up to $1.83 billion to date in 2020. 

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Sony buys minority stake in Epic Games

CEOs of Epic and Sony released a joint press statement that read that both the companies have built their respective businesses at the intersection of technology and creativity. Both the entities share a vision of real-time 3D social experiences which can bring about a transformative change in the medium of music, gaming and films. Tim Sweeney, the founder and CEO of Epic wrote that together, they and Sony are striving to build and open and accessible digital ecosystem which benefits both consumers and content creators. 

Image courtesy - Gematsu on Twitter

This deal does not mean that Epic Games will now only be available on Sony consoles. The studio will be allowed to publish to any other platform they wish to, as confirmed by Epic to a news portal in the USA. To the unversed, Sony and Epic have worked closely for years. Sweeney, the CEO of Epic has described Sony's latest gaming console PlayStation5 to be a remarkably balanced device. Epic had used the latest generation of Sony consoles to showcase the updated version of their gaming engine, Unreal Engine 5, back in May 2020. 

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Epic was also prominent in bringing cross-play multiplayer games on Sony's gaming platform, enabling it for Fortnite back in 2018. Earlier, players could play on Nintendo Switch and Xbox One with each other and access their respective progress and skins across consoles. But, Sony had blocked cross-play on PS4. Since then, Sony has allowed cross-play on their platform for many Epic Games titles including Fortnite. 

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On the other hand, Epic also has an important investor in Tencent. They made an investment of $330 million back in 2012 to acquire 40 per cent stake in the company. Since then, Epic's valuation has grown drastically, fuelled massively by the success of Fortnite. 

Also read: Epic Games shows off Unreal Engine 5's gorgeous graphics in PlayStation 5 demo