Epic Games

Epic Games, Inc. (formerly Potomac Computer Systems and later Epic MegaGames, Inc.) is an American video game and software development company based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following his first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames in early 1992, and brought on Mark Rein, who is the company's vice president to date. Moving their headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio's name was simplified to Epic Games. Epic Games develops the Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine which also powers their internally developed video games, such as Fortnite and the Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade series. In 2014, Unreal Engine was named the "most successful videogame engine" by Guinness World Records.[5]

Epic Games owns video game developer Chair Entertainment and cloud-based software developer Cloudgine, and operates eponymous sub-studios in Seattle, England, Berlin, Yokohama and Seoul. Key personnel at Epic Games include chief executive officerTim Sweeney, lead programmer Steve Polge and art director Chris Perna. Tencent acquired a 40% stake in the company in 2012, after Epic Games realized that the video game industry was heavily developing towards the games as a service model.