Epic Games’s vice president speaks on the studio’s latest licensing deal with Electronic Arts.
Videogaming247 sought out Mark Rein, Epic’s vice president and head spokesman for some comments on the importance of the five-plus game engine licensing deal with industry monolith Electronic Arts.
“It’s significantly more than five more games,” said Rein. “It’s pretty important, yeah. I think it’s one of the biggest engine license deals we’ve done.”
Rein reigned in his previous comment with more soothing words.
“I don’t want to overstate this deal. It’s not like they’re going to use it for every single game,” he explained. “But I think we’ve done pretty well. … There’s still going to be some situations where there’s going to be some technology that suits, and there are people still developing their own technology, but I think it’s just showing the value of licensing technology in general, and how important it is to maintain productivity and profitability and ship really good quality titles.”
Although the licensing agreement carries some large dollar signs with it, Epic is not dependent upon it for future success.
Rein remarked, “I think our future is pretty much secure, and not by any one licensee. I think we’re in pretty good shape regardless of that, but it’s nice to be able to do these license deals and it’s certainly good for the engine business. We’ve invested a lot of money in the engine business and this type of deal is a good pay-off. It’s a good return on our investment.”
The studio supports its deal-making arm with its own stellar software. He concluded, “If we didn’t make great games, we probably wouldn’t sell so many engines.”
