Epic Games, originally Epic MegaGames, is an American video game and software company. Founded by
Tim Sweeney, they started out by releasing successful shareware games like
Jazz Jackrabbit. In 1998, they released
Unreal, the first game to use their Unreal Engine, which has seen widespread use throughout its various iterations and is one of Epic's core products.
In June 2012,
Tencent bought a large stake in Epic, concurrent with Epic's plan to move towards a games-as-a-service model. Their free-to-play
battle royale game
Fortnite: Battle Royale became a massive success and a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
In December 2018, they launched the Epic Games Store, a digital storefront intended as a competitor to similar services like
Valve Corporation's Steam.