The creators of the survival game paid almost $ 100 million for an old shopping center that will be converted into their new headquarters.
This week it became known that Fortnite will be moving. Will it have new maps? Will the successful videogame be hosted on other servers? None of that: Epic Games, the studio that develops the game, announced the purchase of an old shopping mall of almost 1 million square meters, which will become its new headquarters. Of course: it will only be ready in three years, approximately.
The development studio paid $ 95 million for the Cary Town Center, which is located just over two miles from Epic's current offices. Founded in the 1990s, since 1999 the company has its headquarters in North Carolina. It currently has about 2,200 employees globally.
According to the Polygon site, Epic Games has about two dozen subsidiaries and studios that it owns around the world. More than half of those divisions were established or acquired after the launch of Fortnite: Battle Royale, a game that launched in 2017 and in subsequent years was the title that raised the most money in the gaming industry, establishing itself as the great boom of the game. Sector.
For the rest, although it is true that the great audience knows Epic Games for Fortnite, it's "goose that lays the golden eggs"; the studio is also famous for developing the Unreal Engine, a graphics engine used by many video games on the market.
Right now, the mall that Epic acquired has most of its sectors closed. Its owners bought it in 2019 for just over $ 30 million. From the company, they reported that in addition to the offices they will build in the city of Cary, where this building is located, a recreational and sports center was planned prior to this operation.
Prior to this purchase, the firm planned to expand its current headquarters, also located in Cary, to relocate its more than 2,000 workers. With this move, that initiative was discarded.
While the moving project progresses, the company led by Tim Sweney continues to be at war with Apple, which they accuse of monopolistic and abusive practices by charging commissions to developers who offer apps in the App Store. In this framework, the companies are expected to appear in court in May this year. According to the court's resolution, Fortnite could return to iOS after many months absent from devices with that operating system, at least officially.