{"id":1609867,"date":"2026-06-18T04:06:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T04:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8MfncqRvWKWFbkkhg3uNZ"},"modified":"2026-06-18T04:06:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T04:06:22","slug":"it-feels-to-many-like-a-tidal-wave-is-sweeping-over-the-aaa-game-business-says-epic-ceo-tim-sweeney-in-his-diagnosis-of-the-industrys-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/it-feels-to-many-like-a-tidal-wave-is-sweeping-over-the-aaa-game-business-says-epic-ceo-tim-sweeney-in-his-diagnosis-of-the-industrys-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It feels to many like a tidal wave is sweeping over the AAA game business,’ says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney in his diagnosis of the industry’s woes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It is a “time of both crisis and opportunity” for the games industry, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said in his concluding remarks at today’s Unreal Fest<\/a> address, where the Unreal Engine and Fortnite maker demonstrated new features coming to its development tools.<\/p>\n

The kids are playing more games than ever and Fortnite is growing again, Sweeney said, but “a huge number of the new releases of major games are failing.” <\/p>\n

“We’re seeing often hundreds of millions of dollars of dev cost, followed by tens of millions of dollars of revenue, and the dev costs are continuing to grow,” said Sweeney. “It feels to many like a tidal wave is sweeping over the AAA game business.”<\/p>\n

Sweeney’s assessment of the problem echoed sentiments I heard repeatedly at the Game Developer’s Conference back in March: Gamers want social online experiences, but it’s extremely hard to break in and compete with the biggest platforms, like Roblox. Players go where their friends already are, and are more willing to buy in-game items in games they know will still be around in a year. <\/p>\n

“One view of the future is that Roblox grows and eats gaming,” Sweeney said. “A lot of people are saying this online, but you know, what you have there is a centralized platform with a single gatekeeper that commoditizes all content, takes more than 70% of revenue, and has 450 million users on board, and so that’s a real challenge to game developers.”<\/p>\n

Epic believes in a “much brighter” future for developers, said the CEO, in which they rally around Epic’s metaverse vision to collectively take on Roblox with a network of Unreal Engine games, “linking up our content, linking up our communities, and linking up our economies.” <\/p>\n

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