Epic Games, the owner of the Unreal game franchise, has signed a contract with Midway Games of Chicago for development of three games based on the Unreal franchise.
More than 7 million Unreal games have been sold since Unreal Tournament was introduced in 1999, according to Epic Games, which is based in Raleigh.
“Midway gets it. They hit right at the heart of gamers. — They make awesome games and don’t apologize for it, so we think games like Unreal Tournament will fit in perfectly here,” said Mark Rein, vice president and co-founder of Epic Games, in a statement. “In our opinion Midway is doing the industry’s best marketing and promotional campaigns and they will contribute strongly to the ongoing success of the Unreal franchise.”
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Midway gets worldwide publishing rights, with the exception of Korea, to Unreal Championship 2 for Xbox, plus two other Unreal Tournament releases for PCs.
“This relationship with Epic further bolsters the strength of our portfolio of top-rated games and allows us to leverage the marketing capabilities of our organization to take the Unreal franchise to an even broader audience of gamers,” said David Zucker, president and chief executive officer of Midway, in a statement. “It immediately establishes Midway as a leader in the PC games sector.
“Additionally, Unreal Championship 2, scheduled for introduction in February, should further extend Midway’s growing track record for distributing top quality games. We are delighted that Epic chose Midway over other publishers and we look forward to working closely with the Epic team to carefully manage this valuable franchise.”
Epic Games was founded in 1991.
Epic Games: www.epicgames.com
