May 30, 2024

Epic Games

Varsha Bansal

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Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, at the company’s headquarters in Cary, N.C., on July 17, 2019.

Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, at the company’s headquarters in Cary, N.C., on July 17, 2019.Travis Dove—The New York Times/Redux

For years, Epic Games, the creator of the wildly popular video game Fortnite, has been fighting Apple and Google for a bigger piece of the app economy. The private game and software developer filed lawsuits against the tech giants, arguing that their app stores were built around monopolistic policies. In December, a federal jury in San Francisco agreed, declaring Google’s app store an illegal monopoly. But Epic wants more than just more revenue from the two dominant stores: it plans to launch its own app store for both Android and iOS devices by the end of this year, with a goal of offering game developers a better revenue split and charging lower commissions. That new store became more likely in March, when Apple allowed Epic to use iPhone tools to start a competing store after initially blocking the company from doing so. With Disney in February buying a $1.5 billion equity stake in Epic, the entertainment behemoth’s largest investment in the gaming industry, 2024 is shaping up to be a banner year for the North Carolina-based company.