How ‘Fortnite’ creator plans to mount crusade
Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of video game maker Epic Games, has antagonized the world’s most powerful technology giants since 2016.
That year, Sweeney, a selfdescribed computer nerd with a slightly nervous energy, lashed out in an opinion piece, saying Microsoft was attempting “sneaky maneuvers” to dominate personal computer games. He also knocked Facebook’s Oculus Rift app store as “disappointing” for not being as “open” as it claimed.
In 2018, Sweeney went at it again. He released “Fortnite,” Epic’s popular video game, outside Google’s Play Store to bypass its fees, which he called a “tax” and “disproportionate.” And at a January industry conference, he declared that “undue power has accrued to many of the participants who are not at the core of the industry.”
His mission to rein in the power of the tech
companies has reached a fever pitch. Sweeney is preparing for a protracted legal battle after Apple and Google banned “Fortnite,” which is played by more than 350 million people, from their stores this month for trying to get around payment systems. In response, Epic sued both companies, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by forcing developers to use those payment systems.
Sweeney’s yearslong public crusade against the tech giants suggests that the issue is not something he will easily drop. People close to him said the fight is not about money or ego. Instead, they said, it is firmly about principle.
“He sees a vision of the world that is fair and open,” said Bradley Twohig, of Lightspeed Venture Partners, which has invested in Epic.
Bruce Stein, CEO of esports startup aXiomatic and an investor in Epic, said, “He was principled before he had the money to not be principled.”
How deeply Sweeney feels about tech power will be key as the fight with Apple and Google escalates. On Monday, a federal judge in Oakland temporarily blocked Apple from cutting off support for an Epic software development tool called Unreal Engine. Sweeney had said that if Unreal Engine were cut off, it would be an “existential threat” to his company’s $17 billion business. The judge, who did not require Apple to bring “Fortnite” back to the App Store, will rule again on the matter next month.
In an interview last month, Sweeney, 49, said the stakes of the antitrust investigations into tech giants like Apple and Google were no smaller than the future of humanity.
“Otherwise, you have these corporations who control all commerce and all speech,” he said. He declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the active lawsuits, but has written on Twitter that he is “fighting for open platforms and policy changes equally benefiting all developers.”
“I don’t think we are going to be swayed unless we get what we think is right,” Adam Sussman, Epic’s president, said in an interview this week. “We will always sacrifice short term for long term.”
Other developers have embraced Epic’s cause. Spotify, the music streaming app, and Match Group, the maker of dating apps like Tinder, have released statements applauding Epic’s moves. In a legal brief, Epic also outlined Microsoft’s support.
But to many others, Sweeney faces an uphill battle. In conversations with a dozen of Epic’s investors and former executives, as well as with dealmakers and analysts in the gaming industry, many said that while they support Sweeney’s stance, few expect him to prevail in all of his demands against Apple and Google.
“It’s a herculean uphill battle for them to beat Apple in court,” said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, because Epic violated the terms of the App Store.
Asked for comment, Apple referred Monday to its latest legal filing, in which it said that Epic’s “‘emergency’ is entirely of Epic’s own making.” Google said it would “welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring ‘Fortnite’ back to Google Play.”
Sweeney, who grew up in Potomac, Md., and whose father worked for the Defense Mapping Agency, got into technology as a child. At age 9, he learned to code on an Apple II computer. In 1991, as a college student, he started Potomac Computer Systems, selling games on floppy disks through the mail from his parents’ basement.
He eventually dropped out of the University of Maryland, where he had studied mechanical engineering. In 1992, he changed his company’s name to Epic MegaGames, then later dropped “Mega” and moved the startup to North Carolina.
Epic began licensing its tools for graphics and game development — such as Unreal Engine — to other companies. That became a steady source of income, smoothing out the hitsorbust nature of the games business.
Over the years, Sweeney has worked diligently to keep control of Epic, which is privately held. In 2012, when Epic considered a sale, it found two options: It could sell a majority stake in its operations to Warner Bros. for roughly $800 million, or sell a minority stake for the same valuation to Tencent, the Chinese internet company, a person with knowledge of the discussions said.
Even though the Warner plan had more potential business advantages, Epic went with Tencent, which kept Sweeney in control.
His antagonism toward the Big Tech began a few years later when Epic started building “Fortnite,” a battle royalestyle fighting game that later expanded into a more creative mode where players could build their own games and challenges.
“We wanted to build online games and have a direct relationship with our customers,” Sweeney said in the July interview. He added that he had discovered that the fees from the app stores meant that Apple and Google could sometimes make more money on a game than its creators.
“That’s totally unjust,” he said. “That shows the market is out of control.”
Sweeney has backed down once from a fight with a tech giant. In April, two years after releasing “Fortnite” outside the Google Play Store, Epic agreed to offer the game through the store. It said it was doing so because users were encountering “scary, repetitive security popups” to download and update the app outside the Play Store.
Even so, Sweeney was not afraid to thumb his nose at the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. This month, Epic started encouraging the game’s users to make inapp purchases directly, rather than through Apple or Google. That violated Apple’s and Google’s rules that they handle all such app payments so they can collect their 30% commission.
Apple and Google have since banned “Fortnite.” Epic was ready. It rallied its fans and published a video satirizing Apple’s famous “1984” ad, which had portrayed Apple as the underdog. The parody included a villain wearing the same sunglasses as Apple CEO Tim Cook.
On Sunday, Epic hosted a #FreeFortnite gaming contest offering antiApple hats and digital avatars as prizes. And Sweeney? He also played along.