Consolidation continues in the gaming market. Epic Games became the owner of Tonic Games Group— the parent company of Mediatonic Studio. The latter developed the popular battle royale Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.
Image source: Epic Games
The amount of the transaction and its full terms are not disclosed.
According to the head of Epic Games Tim Sweeney, developers from Tonic Games Group share his company’s goal of developing the idea of a metaverse of games. He noted that the authors of Fall Guys are experienced enough to work together with Epic to create “this virtual future.”
According to Mediatonic, so far almost nothing will change for the players. The studio does not plan to switch to a fritupley model and is not going to remove Fall Guys from sale on Steam and on PlayStation consoles. In addition, as the developers promised, the title will also be released later on Nintendo Switch and Xbox.
However, now a number of features will appear in the battle royale, which are available in Fortnite and Rocket League — other games owned by Epic. For example, the account system, crossplay, squad-on-squad mode and much more.
Fall Guys successfully launched in early August 2020. Already in the first day, more than 1.5 million people played it, and by the end of the month its PC circulation reached 8.2 million copies sold. Mediatonic’s hit also became the most downloaded game in the history of the PS Plus subscription.
Note that in addition to Mediatonic, the Tonic Games Group includes The Irregular Corporation publishing house and Fortitude Games studio. All of them also joined Epic Games.