One more movement in a booming industry. “Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, secures $2 billion investment [1,8 milliard d’euros] from Sony and the group behind the Lego franchise,” report it Financial Times. The major video game group, based in North Carolina, had published a press release to this effect on Monday April 11.
In detail, the Japanese firm Sony and the Danish holding Kirkbi each put 1 billion on the table. an agreement that “brings the value of Epic Games to $31.5 billion [29 milliards d’euros], continues the British business daily. After the transaction, Kirkbi will own 3% of the company and Sony will claim 4.9% of the shares. Currently, the video game studio’s majority shareholder is founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. The Chinese giant Tencent has a 40% stake.
Last of a long series of the same kind, the announcement comes in the context of movement of tectonic plates in this sector – in particular since the colossal takeover of the Activision Blizzard group by Microsoft. In the line of sight – and well underlined in the communication of Epic –, the constitution of a metaverse where the players can be embodied in avatars linked to brands such as Lego. A concept that “remains nebulous”, judge him FT, despite the enthusiasm it arouses among investors. The newspaper also points out:
“There is still a long way to go […] so that these virtual worlds achieve a sufficient degree of fluidity to make them attractive to the point of replacing real-life interactions.”