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Boss of Fortnite firm Epic Tim Sweeney enters Bloomberg Billionaire Index, worth $7.16bn

Boss of Fortnite firm Epic Tim Sweeney enters Bloomberg Billionaire Index, worth $7.16bn

It would seem that Tim Sweeney is doing rather well for himself.

The Epic games chief is worth $7.16bn according to the Bloomberg with the developer coming at No.196 on the organisation's billionaire's list.

The bulk of Mr Sweeney's wealth is tied to his 44.7 per cent stake in Epic, a company that is now reported to be worth close to $15bn off the back of Fortnite's success. That's up from the $8.5bn that the firm was worth in July 2018

Sweeney comes ahead of one Gabe Newell from Valve, who charts at No.353 and is worth $4.58bn, but both are in the dust behind the Chinese games wealth on the list.

Tencent co-founder Zhang Zhidong and NetEase CEO William Ding come in at No.82 and 72 respectively, with the former worth $14.5bn and the latter $14.4bn. This is hardly a fair comparison, however, given that video games is just one interest of many for both NetEase and Tencent.

This Chinese wealth will also have been in decline, with the region's ban on games having an impact on the financials of many companies in the region. Tencent certainly has felt the heat, restructuring its entire setup to weather these challenges.

This is just another indication of the massive success of Fortnite. The title has attracted well over 200m players since its launch in July 2017. Well, its initial survival game focused launch, before the rollout of its wildly battle royale mode in September of that year. 

At the end of 2018, PCGamesInsider.biz said that Fortnite was one of the games that defined the year and potentially will have changed the industry as a whole forever

 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.