The gaming industry as a whole feels like it’s in a period of consolidation. There’s been lots of acquisitions and mergers over the last decade or so of bigger companies buying out smaller studios or, in one case, the biggest company buying full third party publisher. Now that continues, but in a way that will be more of a behind the scenes type of deal.
It’s been announced that Epic Games, developer of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine tech, will be buying RAD Game Tools. You may not know who that is if you’re not actively in game development, but you’ve certainly seen their logos at the start of games: Bink Video, Oodle, Telemetry, Granny 3D, and Miles Sound System all come from RAD. RAD is one of the longest running providers of toolsets that range from everything from video to audio to compression. They aren’t just limited to the game industry either, as their tools have also been used in films and television.
Within the announcement, it was stated that these tools would still be available to everyone outside the Unreal Engine ecosystem, so while there will no doubt be a better overall integration into Unreal, no one will be locked out, though the simplification of this process will no doubt be very tempting for those not within the Unreal sphere.