A new report indicates that entertainment giant Disney might be looking to acquire Epic Games. In a recent episode of Matthew Belloni’s podcast, tech journalist Alex Heath discussed these potential plans for an acquisition. Among other things, Heath said that he knows “for a fact” that there are senior executives among Disney’s leadership that want to buy Epic Games, and are simply waiting for the right time. He also noted that there were other executives at the company against the idea. This acquisition would also likely lead to many in-depth integrations for both companies’ IPs and expertise as well.
“I know for a fact there are senior executives in Disney who want them to buy Epic, and are just waiting for that moment,” said Heath. “And then there’s others who think it’s a bad idea. So, I think if Epic ever sold, if it ever decided to call it quits on being an independent company, Disney would be the most natural home for it for a lot of reasons, for the park integration. Can you imagine a Fortnite park?”
Heath went on to discuss Epic Games’ recent legal battles against major tech industry companies like Apple and Google, and how this might also play a pivotal role in keeping Disney from buying the company outright, at least for now. In the long term, however, both companies might want to team up to a greater degree to take on the ever-popular Roblox.
“And, I can see that, but at the same time you have to understand Epic is a founder-controlled company, so Tim Sweeney has full voting stock control and can make unilateral decisions, and it’s really up to him. And he is, as we saw, he was the guy who went to battle against the app stores, against Apple and Google, to open those up. And it’s almost an illogical crusade when you’re running a company like Epic to do something like that.”
“But that kind of thinking is something that’s going to keep Disney a little bit at arm’s length.”
Belloni brings up the fact that the recent financial hardships faced by Epic Games, which led to the company laying off over 1,000 of its employees, could also play a role in Disney’s potential acquisition plans. “If this is the beginning of a long, slow decline for Fortnite, which I’m not sure it is, it’s not great if Disney’s putting all their chips into a declining business.”
“Gaming in general is having a hard time,” responded Heath. “But if you look at Roblox‘s growth, which is where Epic has been trying to take Fortnite into more of an open-world creator-first ecosystem where creators can build businesses, building on top of Fortnite, Roblox is just killing it with that. And I think these experiences are probably still the future of not only gaming, but social media for young people, right? They’re hanging out in these worlds. So Fortnite‘s not dead.”
Belloni responded by saying that his 10-year-old “would be stoked if Tony Stark showed up and Yoda and a bunch of Jedi, and they could play with those.”
“It’s the best combination to potentially actually challenge Roblox‘s dominance here,” noted Heath. “You can call it gaming, but it’s really entertainment, and it’s also social media. I mean Disney’s on the cap table. They’re supposed to be doing this integration.”
It is worth noting that, for now, neither Epic Games nor Disney have made any announcements or statements that indicate that there might be discussions about an acquisition in the works. As Heath and Belloni noted, however, it could potentially be a beneficial partnership, especially in the wake of Disney’s deal with OpenAI falling through in light of the latter bringing an end to its video generation technology Sora.