Will Disney Acquire Fortnite from Epic Games?

Fortnite developer Epic Games has had a turbulent year, from seeing a huge downturn in player interest in the popular sandbox game to dealing with one of the largest mass layoffs the gaming industry has ever seen. Epic Games has certainly seen better days; however, it seems Disney has set their sights on the game development company, particularly in acquiring Fortnite. Here’s what one former Disney exec had to say about the situation in an interview with CNBC.

Disney Wants to Buy Fortnite

According to reports made by industry professionals, Epic Games is not looking to sell Fortnite, its most popular game to date; however, Disney is very interested in acquiring the popular sandbox game should Epic Games ever decide to sell it. Epic Games has been dealing with a lot. In 2023, the gaming company laid off over 800 employees due to high spending costs, and that was just the beginning of their troubles.

Moreover, last year Epic Games saw a sharp decline in player interest in Fortnite, prompting the company to lay off over 1,000 employees last week. This was the largest round of layoffs the gaming industry had ever seen, shocking not just fans but also the employees affected, many of whom were veteran game developers who worked on Fortnite and had been employed at Epic Games for years.

With all the turbulence Epic Games has experienced over the past few years, it’s not surprising that Disney has already expressed interest in acquiring the popular sandbox game. Disney already has ties to Fortnite, with many skin releases owned by Disney, from Marvel to Star Wars to Pixar to even some Disney princesses like Elsa. If Epic Games were to ever sell rights to Fortnite, it’d be the most logical step for Disney to buy it, according to veteran tech reporter Alex Heath.

Tech Industry Reporter Has the Inside Scoop

Tech reporter Alex Heath joined The Twon podcast discussing the end of Disney’s deal with OpenAI after they announced the shutdown of video app Sora. During the podcast, Heath and The Town host Matt Belloni pivot and also discuss the massive layoff session at Epic Games, which took place last week, and this also led the discussion to whether Disney would acquire Epic Games’ most popular game, Fortnite, in the near future.

Heath explains that senior executives were waiting for the right moment to make a bid for the sandbox game, after Disney’s prior $1.5 billion investment into Epic Games a couple of weeks ago. Also, according to Heath, Disney execs are split on the idea, with some wanting to buy and others believing it to be a bad idea. Here’s an excerpt from the point during the podcast where Heath and Belloni discuss Disney potentially buying Fortnite:

Now, that deal was one that Josh Dear at Disney may not have been 100% behind. We know he was 500% behind this Epic Games relationship that Disney has where they are developing a world an experience within Fortnite. Then on the same day that the Open AI deal unraveled, Epic announced a thousand layoffs.

Yeah.

And specifically they announced the layoffs because they said that Fortnite was not catching on. The new versions of Fortnite people are not into not growing. Not growing like uh it has been. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So what does that mean for Disney?

Would you be would you be actually stressed about that if you’re tomorrow or is it you know they say it’s still going strong that they’re still going to do what they’re planning to do?

I think if Epic went away Disney would be fine, right? There’s Roblox. There’s other open world platforms like this. But they put all their chips into this.

There were rumors that Disney might even buy Epic games at some point.

I know for a fact there are senior executives in Disney who want them to buy Epic and are just waiting for that moment. And then there’s others who think it’s a bad idea. So I think if Epic ever sold, if it ever decided to to call it quits on being an independent company, uh Disney would be the most natural home for it for a lot of reasons. for the park integration.

Can you imagine a Fortnite park to um all the open world you know integrating Disney IP into it which they’ve already you know announced um and also you know Disney’s you know gaming platform and I can see that but at the same time I mean you have to understand Epic is a uh founder controlled company so Tim Sweeney there the founder um has full you know voting stock control and can make unilateral decisions and it’s really up to him and um he is as we saw you know, he was the guy who went to battle against the app stores, against Apple and Google to to uh open those up.

And that’s it’s almost an illogical crusade when you’re running a company like Epic to do something like that. And he even acknowledges in the layoff email like that cost us.

Former Disney Exec Interview With CNBC

To top everything off, a former Disney exec also confirmed the prospect of Disney potentially acquiring Fortnite if Epic Games decided to sell it. Former Disney executive and co-CEO of Candle Media, Kevin Mayer, confirmed Disney’s interest in the game during an interview with CNBC, saying:

“He (D’Amaro) has a big investment in Epic Games. Which I think is a great move. He’s moved that over to Dana’s organization, which is a great signal. He has to figure out what to do there. I think Epic or some other video game asset would be a great addition to The Walt Disney Company’s asset base.”