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Epic Games (which challenges Apple and Google) will play with Mediatonic (Fall Guys)

3 years ago babelfish

Epic Games (which challenges Apple and Google) will play with Mediatonic (Fall Guys)

Why Epic Games bought Mediatonic. Facts, numbers and comments

Microtransactions as the only business model. Almost. At least to pay for the development of more serious projects. It seems strange (indeed, no, it is not at all) that to support it is the Potomac software house founded in 1991 by Tim Sweeney who started a merciless fight with Google and Apple for the percentage they keep on user purchases ( here we have told the story well , still awaiting resolution and pending in several classrooms, from the judicial ones to those of the EU). But it is now clear that Epic Games is betting everything on this kind of earnings, so much so that it has just bought Mediatonic, or their goose that lays golden eggs: Fall Guys . But let's go in order.

THE NEW BUSINESS MODEL OF EPIC GAMES

Once upon a time there was Epic Games, a “pure” software house, in the sense that it only thought about developing. After a series of mediocre video games, which no one remembers today, he developed Unreal . It was 1998 and Unreal was a fairly shameless clone of Quake (1996), which was itself a copy of Doom (1993). But Doom and Quake shared the same development team, at least.

The fact is that Unreal played a fundamental role in the history of Epic Games. On a visual level, in fact, the game allowed virtuosity (light effects, reflections, transparencies, detailed textures) and a polygonal complexity that no one was able to achieve at the time. Sweeney then turned on the proverbial light bulb: why not license the game's graphics engine, the Unreal Engine, which had cost the team three years of effort, plus all the money needed to develop the video game?

LICENSE TO REDUCE BUSINESS RISK

Developing a video game is a leap in the dark: it takes a lot of investments, a lot of resources (at the time the studies were starting to be structured, the era of videogames made in the garage by one or two students was long over); living by renting a graphics engine is much better. An empty palette is licensed, it is up to those who use it to decide what to do with it, they do not take on their shoulders the risk that the game does not appeal to the public and remains on the shelves.

FROM UNREAL ENGINE TO LIVE SERVICE

The move was successful. Today the average gamer doesn't know what Unreal is , but he knows the Unreal Engine. The fifth version of the graphics engine was shown on May 13, 2020 on the PlayStation 5 and is something that takes your breath away in power and accuracy. The game you see starting at 1:20 does not exist and probably never will. It serves to make people understand what the Unreal Engine can do in the hands of those who decide to rent it to develop their video game. And it is not even said that the current consoles are able to really do all those amazing things together, in the same title.

This is a part of Epic Games' business. The money, the real ones, the easy ones, derive from another type of activity, however closely related to the concept of licensing a software and receiving fragmented and time-delayed payments in exchange. Live service titles with microtransactions. Epic Games, which is currently 40% in the hands of the Chinese giant Tencent (and this gives it the necessary security to challenge Google and Apple), can already count on two blockbusters such as Fortnite and Rocket League ; now it will also have Fall Guys , brought as a dowry by Mediatonic.

WHAT EPIC GAMES WILL DO WITH MEDIATONIC

The strategy of Epic Games is therefore now clear. As well as what Mediatonic wants to do, which with its Fall Guys has already collected record numbers: 11 million copies sold from 4 August 2020 to November of the same year, only on PC (the game is also available on consoles and soon on Nintendo Switch). And between October and November he managed to place a million copies.

The game that drives everyone crazy (and which, with its proceeds, could also allow its current publisher, Devolver Digital, not one of the most renowned, to make the qualitative leap) is a battle royale-style MMO party game (you need to connect and compete against each other) in which over 60 players compete online, round after round, until there is only one winner. Fall Guys is cheap (20 euros), is often on offer and contains the infamous "Optional purchases during the game", which are the ones that present the real gain, because it allows you to break up the offer into more micro contents sold separately. It is as if instead of a house you decide to sell the individual bricks, the tiles, the pipes… Nobody would be so crazy to buy it like this: gamers, however, would. Epic Games has understood this and with Mediatonic will continue to strike while the iron is hot.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/epic-games-che-sfida-apple-e-google-si-trastullera-con-mediatonic-fall-guys/ on Wed, 03 Mar 2021 10:33:08 +0000.