, formerly known as ''Epic MegaGames'' and also known as ''Epic'', is a
Computer Game Development company based in
Raleigh, North Carolina ,
United States .
They were initally founded under the name in ''. During this time, they also published and sold games developed by other developers such as those by
Safari Software and also
XLand's Robbo ,
Heartlight , and
Electro Man ; and
Renaissance's Zone 66 . In 1997 Safari Software was acquired in whole by Epic and some of their titles as well as other pre-1998 games are sold under the '''Epic Classics''' brand.
In 1998, Epic Games released ''
Unreal '', a
3D First-person Shooter , which expanded into a series of
''Unreal'' Games . The company also began to license the core technology, or
Unreal Engine , used for the series to other game developers. In 1999, the company changed its name to Epic Games and moved its offices, including its Rockville headquarters, to Raleigh. Subsequently came the ''
Unreal Tournament '' series. At present, the company is working on the
Xbox 360 title ''
Gears Of War '', as well as ''
Unreal Tournament 2007 '' for the PC.
Designers at Epic Games include the aformentioned Lead Programmer
Tim Sweeney and Games Industry Celebrity and Level Designer
Cliff Bleszinski .
Epic is the proprietor of three of the most successful
Game Engines in the videogame industry. Each Unreal Engine, as they are called, has a complete feature set of graphical rendering, sound processing, and physics that can be widely adapted to fit the specific needs of a game developer that does not want to code its own engine from scratch. Epic has so far made three engines. These are the
Unreal Engine , the
Unreal Engine 2 and its 2.5 point release featuring support for ingame vehicles and improved netcode, and
Unreal Engine 3 , which is a next-generation game engine featuring per-pixel shaders, lifelike physics that support accelleration with the
PhysX card, and a plethora of improved developer tools to accellerate the development process.
Epic has also revealed in interviews that an Unreal Engine 4 is in the works, despite the fact that there are not yet any Unreal Engine 3 titles that have shipped, although there are more than a dozen in development.
