Epic Games has acquired RAD Game Tools

Epic Games announced that it had acquired “the technology and business” of RAD Game Tools.

A statement reads:

Together, Epic and RAD plan to integrate RAD’s powerful technology into Unreal Engine to benefit the developer community and gamers alike.

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.

Epic uses RAD Game Tools’ compression technology inside Fortnite. Its proprietary Bink Video file format and compression algorithms were first invented back in 1999 and continue to exist, supporting high definition video with HDR. RAD Game Tools also offers a data compression system called Oodle alongside a profiler called Telemetry.

Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games, said:

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.

Jeff Roberts, Founder and CEO of RAD Game Tools, added:

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.