Fortnite developer Epic Games is aiming to raise $1.7 billion USD, doubling its fundraising efforts over the past year.
As reported in Bloomberg, sources have valued the company – 40 per cent of which is owned by Chinese gaming giant Tencent – at $28 billion, despite its ongoing legal stoushes with Apple and Google over their respective app store policies.
Bloomberg reports that more than $1 billion USD has already been committed, largely from institutional investors such as big mutual funds; many of them are existing backers, the sources say.
Building on its Fortnite success, as well as licencing dollars from its Unreal Engine game development software, Epic recently acquired Tonic Games Group, the company behind popular online title Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.
The publisher is currently embroiled in a number of court battles against Apple and Google, both here and in the US, over the manufacturers’ policy of taking large commissions from in-app purchases made through their app stores.
Apple in particular has earned Epic’s ire after it pulled Fortnite from the App Store and terminated Epic’s developer account following the introduction of alternate payment methods that bypassed Apple’s own, which is explicitly against the App Store terms of service.