Epic Games

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Epic Games

Basic information
Founded	1991
Legal Structure	Private
Industry	Video Games
Also known as
Official website	https://epicgames.com/

Epic Games is a software development and media-publishing company founded in 1991 by Tim Sweeney. They are best known for the development of the Unreal Engine and the popular video game Fortnite. Epic maintains their own digital software distribution platform, the Epic Games Store.

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

• User Freedom
• User Privacy
• Business Model
• Market Control

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Snippet of Epic Games updated EULA, 18 Mar 2022.

• Forced arbitration: Epic Games updated their Epic Games Store policy on 18 March 2022 to include forced arbitration in their Terms of Service. The users were required to agree to the new terms in order to continue using the platform. If a user did not agree to the new terms, they were effectively locked out of their library of previously purchased games and software.

Incidents

Removal of Linux and MacOS versions of Rocket League (2020)

On 23 January 2020, Epic and its subsidiary Psyonix announced that while Rocket League players had purchased the game with full support for Linux and MacOS, this support was being withdrawn and the game would be offline only for these operating systems, and players were directed to play the game on Windows instead. Many speculated that the change was in relation to Psyonix's acquisition by Epic Games several months earlier. At the time of acquisition Epic stated that players "will still be able to play Rocket League on Steam with all of the content they've previously purchased."^{[citation needed]}

Fortnite excluded from Steam Deck (2022)

In February 2022, Valve launched its Steam Deck handheld console, which runs on a Linux-based SteamOS. This is problematic for video games that are not compatible with Linux, but Valve used a work-around involving a compatibility layer called Proton to allow the Steam Deck to run Windows games. Users hoped this meant being able to play Fortnite on Steam (which is a competing platform to Epic Games Store), however CEO Tim Sweeney stated in response to a tweet that the game would not be made compatible with Linux nor Proton, citing a lack of confidence at being able to reliably enforce its Easy Anti-Cheat software:

Fortnite no, but there's a big effort underway to maximize Easy Anti Cheat compatibility with Steam Deck.
[...] We don't have confidence that we'd be able to combat cheating at scale under a wide array of kernel configurations including custom ones.

Removal of titles from storefront (2022)

On 14 December 2022, Epic Games began de-listing "older" titles from the Epic Games storefront. Among the first to be affected by these removals were owners of various titles within the Unreal and Unreal Tournament series, who had their licenses to these games effectively revoked from their accounts, and were thus unable to launch or install them. A statement released by Epic Games on 14 December 2022 regarding the removal stated that this was done in order to "...move to solely support Epic Online Services with its unified friends system, voice chat features, parental controls, and parental verification features."

A few years later, some titles would make their way to the Internet Archive for users to freely install, but not all de-listed games have been republished onto the platform.

Violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and usage of dark patterns (2022)

On 19 December 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it secured agreements that require Epic Games, Inc. to pay a total of $520 million for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and using dark patterns to trick players into making purchases.

Account requirement for Rocket League (2025)

Main article: Epic Games forced third party account creation in Rocket League

Following the v2.48 patch on 29 January 2025, Rocket League players on Steam were met with an error upon startup of the game, with the user being required to create an Epic Games account (see Forced account) before being able to access the game. This change was not mentioned in the patch notes, and was done after the game was moved from Steam to Epic Games Store in 2020.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• GOG.com
• Steam
• DRM
• Games as a service