Epic Games has just made an important acquisition in its history by buying RAD Game Tools. The maker of game development tools was acquired recently by EPIC games.
In case you didn’t know, RAD Game Tools is a video game software development company whose products and technology are used in almost 20,000+ games and are leveraged by the world’s leading gaming companies, including Epic. You might have noticed the Bink “Video logo” at the opening screen of some of the PC titles once the game has been launched.
These game environment tools have been used in the gaming industry for quite some time. RAD will directly integrate its toolset into Unreal Engine, though the tools won’t be exclusive to Unreal Engine projects. Close integration with engines and platforms makes for good standards, and good standards get adopted and embraced by developers in the end.
As graphics in game development and beyond become more photorealistic and powerful, developers need best-in-class compression software that can manage increased data requirements without compromising quality.
According to the report, 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.
“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”. – said Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games.
Rad (styled RAD) has been used in games for a long time. BINK is a video codec for games that focuses on high compression and speedy rendering, both important in the gaming environment. Oodle, Telemetry, Granny 3D and Miles Sound System are all development tools as well. Bink is tiny, easy-to-use, self-contained and fast. Bink now also has HDR support, so you can compress and playback high color-depth video in your HDR game.
Bink also has optional GPU decoding for even faster decoding. With GPU-assistance, you can decode 4K video frames in as little 2.3ms on PS4/Xbox One, and 1.4 ms on a PC. Oodle data compression on the other hand gives you the fastest lossless generic data decoding in the world. Load your data faster; pack your data smaller, and it is cross platform and easy to use.
Oodle features the amazing Oodle Kraken, Oodle Leviathan, Oodle Mermaid, and Oodle Selkie – four codecs that decode faster than anything seen before, with a range of compression ratios.
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”.
Epic said in its announcement that RAD will continue supporting their game industry, film, and television partners, with their sales and business development team maintaining and selling licenses for their products to companies across industries – including those that do not utilize Unreal Engine.
So while Bink and the rest of the tools continue to be available for anyone to use outside of Epic, they will almost certainly be better integrated within the Unreal ecosystem and domain.
Stay tuned for more!
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Great news for developers!
I don’t get it, how ?
Think logically
But you don’t?
Because Tencent/China owns shares at Epic. And i’m not being sarcastic.
Tencent owns 40% of EPIC. They don’t have control of EPIC but they certainly have strong influence.
And how it is supposed to help devs ?
For the same reason some costumers get mad at devs for choosing Epic first.
In other clearer words pls ? I’m really confused
If they didn’t benefit, they woudn’t take deals with Epic. That clear?
Well it takes some time to really now if the benefits are real at long term, but anyway i get it, still doesn’t answer the question, how this will help devs ? He’s talking about devs in general i guess and not the RAD GT team specifically
“Well it takes some time to really now if the benefits are real at long term”
It doesn’t really, people don’t make these decisions if there isn’t a benefit upfront, right wing people need to get this idea out of their heads that companies will get their punishment down the road for decisions they don’t like. Take the meme “get woke, go broke”, that sh#t is fake as hell, they focus on the rare exception rather than the norm.
As for RAD GT, don’t know if this will have future benefits or harm developers, Epic have a pro-dev vision for a long time and that is unlikely to change.
“It doesn’t really, people don’t make these decisions if there isn’t a benefit upfront”
Lol a lot of companies suffered or just closed after being acquired, it doesn’t always work well
“right wing people need to get this idea out of their heads that companies will get their punishment down the road for decisions”
I consider myself a centrist, and i didn’t get political in this particular topic at all, so keep what you urgently wanted to say to the “right” people pls
“Epic have a pro-dev vision for a long time and that is unlikely to change”
They’re pro-themselves first and for all because they think this will let them share the table with Valve, if someday dinosaurs can help them achieve this they will become pro-dinosaur
“Lol a lot of companies suffered or just closed after being acquired, it doesn’t always work well”
It did work well for the ones that sold the company.
“They’re pro-themselves first”
Everyone is, i didn’t meant to say they do this for philantropy.
Epic, a chinese proxy, just bought an independent company and now they can decide who uses the software and for what price.
How the hell is this great news for developers?
The lack of self awareness of conservatards is amazing. The western world is crumbling on it’s own self made sh#t and these dorks still crying about muh China…
I would be more concerned if it was an western tech oligopoly that made bought the tec, those are the ones that plays dirty.
Epic might as well be one backed up by Chinese money and values
So? Just don’t badmouth Xi and they’ll be fine. What about the code of conduct here and all the draconian rules?
Or mention Taiwan, or have skeletons and ghosts or an array of different things.
Onwards to glory comrade!
Taiwan is a US satellite, their gov could be bombed for all i care, but don’t you dare “misgender” someone in the west.
West =/= USA
Try again chincom
Lmao the west indulges USA worst behaviours, and if that changes is because their power is crumbling, so not very noble of them.
“if that changes is because their power is crumbling”
Good
“not very noble of them.”
I don’t care if it’s noble or not, I care that it stops, which is in the process of happening.
“I don’t care if it’s noble or not, I care that it stops, which is in the process of happening.”
Ironically, that will be achieved by a multipolar world order, with actors such as China, Russia, Iran, etc. But US/Israel and it’s proxies will always sh#t all over this with their bs.
F)ck off klke.
False equivalence, Valve charges nothing for their engine and Epic lives off Tencents money
“Massive”
Says who? Daddy Tim?
It’s substantially less than retail and nowadays only done to big publishers.
Not only that but Epic can afford not charging anything to devs because they’re a Tencent proxy and their store is literally Tencents way of trying to control the market.
Steam and Valve has a shittons of issues including censoring for the chinsese and them being a monopoly is a big issue, but they were the ones who stuck around the business when everybody was moving to consoles and they’re certainly better than the locusts at Epic.
Now go suck some Chincom micropenis
“I’m blocking you”
Good, keep to your circlejerk you cowardly chinese muppet
lol the comments. People are f##king stupid. I guess give up gaming! IDGAF go cry about every single thing all the time. Nothing please’s anybody. Guess i’ll go back to playing my free games on the epic launcher..
*TRIGGERED* WAAAAH
Maybe you should go check yourself for brain damage
The codec used by VLC is a RAD Game Tools property
Epic are just gobbling up whatever company makes stuff for everyone, thus making everyone come to Epic, which is just typical of a mantra for Timmy boy.
Maybe that “data compression technology” will help them reduce the required bandwidth so to evade getting caught again taking 14x the normal amount of user data!
Ahahahah
Truly funny.
EPIC is a joke at this point.
EPIC move ! 😀 I think slowly Tim Sweeney will capture the whole Gaming industry, lol.
This is nothing good.
Basically you are crying more about it, while spending money on woke products such as Halo MCC.
It not a monopoly in the making, no no sir, they just making it so all roads lead to Epic and glorious China.
Stop with the cONsPirAciEs, they just making UE the best, why settled with subpar products . Have you seen the competion, is stuck in the past, there’s no other modern freely availble engine like UE out there, oooh and how hard is too work with them.
Just the amount of UE games out there should show you how great it is, plus who can refuse the monetary incentives of using the tools we provide.
Heil Xi!, Timmy probably in some PR deparment.
/s
Where does the “/s” begins and ends in your comment? Or is it the entire comment?
Wherever you like.
2 years ago Sweeney that said one day EGS would rival Steam. I doubted it then but I wanted to give him a chance to prove he would. They are still a bare bones store today. The only reason they exist today is with paid for exclusives and weekly free games.
Sweeney should have just invested more in his store instead of spending so much on free games. That doesn’t bode well for the future of EGS. People should think about that before spending money there.