Epic Games revealed the acquisition of software developer RAD Game Tools. Founded all the way back in 1988, RAD's technology has since appeared in some 24,600 games to date, between the Bink video codec, Oodle data compression, and more.
Kim Libreri, Chief Technology Officer at Epic, gave an enthusiastic welcome to RAD:
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. 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.
For his part, Jeff Roberts (Founder and CEO of RAD Game Tools) echoed the sentiment:
Our work with Epic goes back decades, and joining forces is a natural next step given our alignment on products, mission, and culture. 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.
As one could easily have predicted, the primary goal is to integrate RAD technologies directly into Epic's Unreal Engine. However, the technologies will remain available to licensees even outside of Unreal Engine.
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. 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.
The acquisition of RAD Game Tools is only the latest investment made by Epic. Just last week, the company purchased the Cary Towner Center which will be repurposed into the new campus HQ by 2024, at least according to the current schedule.
