Epic Games has acquired RAD Game Tools

Building a better Unreal Engine.

Epic Games has today announced it has acquired “the techonology and business” of RAD Game Tools.

“Together, Epic and RAD plan to integrate RAD’s powerful technology into Unreal Engine to benefit the developer community and gamers alike,” a statement reads.

“Members of the RAD team will partner closely with Epic’s rendering, animation, insights, and audio teams, integrating key tech and improvements across Unreal Engine and beyond,” the statment continues. “RAD and Epic combining forces will allow even more developers access to tools that make their games load and download faster, and offer their players a better, higher quality video and gaming experience.”

Of note, Epic seems enamoured with RAD Game Tools’ compression technology, as currently used inside Epic’s popular Fortnite. Its proprietary Bink Video file format and compression algorithms were first created in March 1999 and exist to this date, supporting high definition video with HDR. The company also offers a data compression system called Oodle alongside a profiler called Telemetry

“We know first-hand how impressive RAD’s compression technology is, having used it to improve the. load time and quality of our most popular games – including Fortnite,” said Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games. “The RAD team includes some of the world’s leading compression, video and game dev tooling experts, and we are thrilled to welcome them to the Epic family.”

“Our work with Epic goes back decades, and joining forces is a natural next step given our alignment on products, mission, and culture,” added Jeff Roberts, Founder and CEO of RAD Game Tools. “We both believe that solid technologies enable developers to build beautiful, performant, and reliable experiences. We’re excited and humbled to join the amazing Epic team.”