Tag: Business

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Epic Games Invest in Houdini Maker SideFX Software

Epic Games have just made an investment in SideFX Software, the maker of the procedural graphics powerhouse software Houdini.

Details of the investment from the SideFX blog:

We’re happy to share an exciting update: Epic Games is now a minority investor in SideFX. In Epic, SideFX gains a strong partner whose passion for the industry closely aligns with ours.

Kim Davidson remains the majority owner of SideFX, as well as President and CEO. He continues his strong, unwavering commitment to SideFX’s staff, customers, and partners.

SideFX and Epic are both committed to SideFX continuing its work with other industry partners – including all other content creation applications and game engines. This new development will have no impact at all on the Houdini development roadmap, as SideFX will continue to define its own path as an industry-leading procedural 3D platform for the film, TV, advertising and games sectors.

Dollar values of the investment were not disclosed. From the announcement it appears the investment should have minimal impact on neither Houdini or Unreal Engine. Epic Games have been making more and more investments of late including their $15M investment in Manticore Games.

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Unity Launch Game Growth Publishing Program

Unity have just launched a new interesting publishing program for indie game developers that have or are creating free to play mobile games. Essentially Unity are offering to fund the promotional costs of selected games and provide monetization, growth and ad placement support over the lifetime of the game. Of course this comes at a cost and that cost is a 50/50 revenue split, with a scenario described on the Unity blog:

We want to be clear about the terms up front so you can decide if Game Growth is the right program for you. Let’s break down the revenue sharing with an example:

1- An indie developer has a mobile game that makes $3,000/month. They apply to the Game Growth program. Unity spends $100,000/month to acquire new users to the game, retains those users with dedicated live operations support, and grows the game to $130,000/month in revenue.*

2- Unity would first recoup their $100,000 in monthly user acquisition costs, leaving $30,000 in monthly revenue. So the developer and Unity would share that $30,000 equally, giving $15,000 to the developer and $15,000 to Unity.*

*This model would continue throughout the partnership. We’re using this fictitious example to illustrate the revenue sharing model only. The exact investment/revenue amounts will not always be consistent month over month.

One major advantage to this approach over a traditional publisher agreement is you retain all control over your company and your games IP with minimal commitment requirements. If you are interested in applying you can do so in the Unity Dashboard.

In addition to the Unity Growth program, there is also an asset giveaway going on right now. You can get the POLYGON Prototype Pack for free using the code ‘SYNTYSALE2020’, available until October 20th. Additionally Synty assets are currently on sale for 50% off. Both of the above links contain an affiliate code that pays GFS a small commission if you buy anything. You can learn more about the new Unity publishing programming and the assets in the video below.

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Roblox Going Public

Roblox, the popular programmable sandbox video game, have just announced their intentions to go public, seeking an initial valuation of 8 Billion dollars. After their most recent round of venture capital, Roblox is currently valued at half that, with a 4B$ valuation.

Interestingly according to Reuters Roblox may go public in a very non-conventional way.

Roblox is weighing whether to go public through a traditional initial public offering or a direct listing, the sources said, cautioning that the plans are subject to market conditions.

The sources requested anonymity as the plans are private. Roblox declined to comment.

In a direct listing, no new shares are sold and underwriting banks do not weigh in on the pricing, unlike in an IPO.

By not selling new shares, companies do not dilute the ownership stakes of existing shareholders and the public listing allows current investors to sell shares easily.

Direct listings are relatively rare. Workplace software maker Asana Inc and data analytics company Palantir Technologies on Wednesday became only the third and fourth companies to go public on the New York Stock Exchange through a direct listing.

So why is this of interest to game developers? Game developers are making a lot of money on the Roblox “platform”, with 2020 earnings expected to reach about 1/4 Billion dollars according to MarketWatch:

Roblox announced in July that it had more than 150 million monthly active users on its platform, which topped the latest numbers from a similar game, “Minecraft.” Microsoft Corp.’s  Xbox division announced in May that 126 million people were playing that title each month.

Roblox also offers tools for developers and said in July that its developer community was on pace to earn $250 million in 2020, up from $110 million in 2019.

Games on the Roblox platform include “Adopt Me!,” a virtual-pet title that had over 10 billion plays as of late July, and “Piggy,” which launched in January and had nearly 5 billion visits in just over six months from its launch date.

If you are interested in learning more about Roblox’s developer program, the developer portal is available here. You can learn more about the Roblox IPO in the video below.

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Epic Games Have Acquired Super Awesome

Epic Games have just announced the acquisition of Super Awesome, a company dedicated to the protection of children online. Super Awesome make a number of products for creators, game developers and advertisers to be able to collect information on children in a manner that is compliant with major laws such as COPPA and GDPR.

Details of the acquisition from the Super Awesome announcement:

That question was the start of a discussion which began many months ago at a (pre-lockdown) dinner in Cary, North Carolina. It concludes today as I’m delighted to announce that we have agreed to be acquired by Epic Games, joining their family while continuing our mission as SuperAwesome (see the announcement here).

Tim Sweeney and his team understand the importance of responsibly engaging with kids and parents. They’re also incredibly serious about privacy. It’s a set of values that instantly became apparent when Tim and I began discussing a partnership. 

Joining Epic Games means many things. It means continued (and indeed greater) support for our customers: developers, content-owners and brands who want to do more for kids. It means continued investment in kidtech solutions to help the overall ecosystem. Ultimately (and crucially), it’s a step-change in making the internet safer for kids. We have always been proud of our mission. We’re even prouder to do it with a principles-driven company like Epic Games.

You can learn more about the acquisition and Super Awesome’s products in the video below.

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Epic Games Lead $15M Round of Funding For Manticore Games

It was announced today that Epic Games was leading a $15M round of funding for Manticore Games, the creator of the Core game creation platform. Core is a member of a growing segment of “games for making games”, similar to other titles such as Dreams and Roblox. Core is built on top of the Unreal Engine and provides most of the tools required to make modern online games in an easy to use package.

Details of the investment from Manticore Games:

Manticore Games has closed $15 million in funding, led by Epic Games and validating the vision and the progress of Core toward an endless gaming multiverse.

Manticore’s mission is to unleash a new wave of creativity in games by radically lowering the barriers to game making and publishing the same way that YouTube revolutionized video creation.

“Core is very impressive,” said Adam Sussman, President, Epic Games. “At Epic we believe the industry is ultimately headed to games becoming more like open platforms where creators can build their own worlds. Built in Unreal Engine, Core exemplifies this future and goes one step further by providing the environment for anybody to create great multiplayer games, and a metaverse playground where players discover endless entertainment.”

You can learn more about the acquisition and get a brief overview of Core in action in the video below (or watch on Odysee here). For more details on Core be sure to check out our previous coverage here when they announced alpha, and here when monetization for creators was announced.