Epic Games

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Epic Games

Basic information
Founded	1991
Legal structure	Private
Industry	Video Games
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 company's conduct regarding (if applicable):

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

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Bad Practices

Forced Arbitration

Epic Games updated their Epic Games Store policy on March 18, 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.

Snippet of Epic Games updated EULA, 18 Mar 2022.

Incidents

Removal of titles from storefront

On December 14th, 2022, Epic Games began delisting '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 December 14th, 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." (Editor's note: add a screenshot of UT being grayed out in the launcher!)

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

Removal of Linux and MacOS versions of Rocket League

In 2020, Epic and its subsidiary Psyonix announced that whilst 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."

Account requirement for Rocket League

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

Following the v2.48 patch on January 29th 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 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.

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

In December 2022 the 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.