Video Game CEO Who Challenged Apple Gives His Best Advice

Taking risks is an essential part of any business venture. Entrepreneurs and business leaders are no strangers to the risks and uncertainties that come with building something from scratch.

According to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney there are two types of risks in business, and one is even more significant than the other.

"There are two types of risks in business. Everyone focuses on the risk of losing what they've built, because it's so apparent," he tweeted on April, 21.

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Sweeney added: "But there's an even bigger risk: the risk of not building what you're capable of building. This risk is unquantifiable, easy to ignore, and infinite."

There are two types of risks in business. Everyone focuses on the risk of losing what they've built, because it's so apparent.

But there's an even bigger risk: the risk of not building what you're capable of building. This risk is unquantifiable, easy to ignore, and infinite.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 21, 2023

Sweeney is no stranger to taking risks. He founded Epic Games in 1991 as Potomac Computer Systems and his company has become a household name in the video game industry. Epic Games is responsible for some of the most popular and successful video games of all time, including Fortnite and Gears of War.

The company also has its own publishing wing, Epic Games Publishing, under which it has published titles from other developers, such as Fall Guys and Rocket League Sideswipe.

Epic's early success came with the game ZZT, which was released in 1991 and became a cult classic. In 1998, Epic released Unreal, a first-person shooter game that became a huge success and spawned a franchise.

But it was Epic's Unreal Engine that became the company's most significant achievement, providing a platform for creating some of the most popular video games in the world.

Sweeney, who wrote his first computer program at the age of 10 and has been programming ever since, has challenged Apple Inc AAPL in the past.

In a recent interview with Games Industry Biz, Sweeney shared his perspective on the metaverse and Epic's plans to create a "unified" ecosystem that avoids becoming "another walled garden" versus Apple, which operates a closed system through the App Store on iPhone and iPad.

"They’ll either try to crush the metaverse, or extract all the profit from it. One or the other. Apple doesn’t let you use a competing browser engine. So they can do the same thing with the metaverse, so [they] can say, ‘You must use Apple’s limited metaverse engine, you can’t build your own, you can’t use Unreal.’

"They could just amend all the platform’s rules tomorrow to kill everything everybody is doing, and that’s why we need really robust antitrust [laws]. And that’s why we’re fighting this so hard," the CEO stated.

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Photo: Official GDC via WikiCommons