Epic Games Acquires Harmonix

On November 23rd, Epic Games announced it had acquired the video game development studio Harmonix. This deal was for an undisclosed amount of money.

Epic Games said that it plans on working closely with Harmonix “to develop musical journeys and gameplay for Fortnite.” On top of that, Epic said that Harmonix “is needed to reimagine how music is experienced, created and distributed” within the metaverse.

“Music is already bringing millions of people together in Fortnite, from our emotes to global concerts and events,” said Alain Tascan, the vice president of game development for Epic Games, in a statement. “Together, with the Harmonix team, we will transform how players experience music, going from passive listeners to active participants.”

Harmonix will reportedly continue to support pre-existing titles. This will include Rock Band 4 as well as a variety of other games.

The Profit‘s Take:

If Epic paid a few million dollars to get some developers and licenses, that makes total sense. However, I think it would be crazy to pay any kind of premium above that. I don’t get what cheap plastic game controller guitars have to do with the metaverse. I can draw two conclusions from this. 1. Epic has a track record of purchasing games or studios that are either on the decline or dead, once again proving Tim Sweeney is distracted. 2. Epic is out raising money trying to secure a crazy high valuation, so this is their way of showing that they are doing something accretive. Adding Rock Band to your portfolio can justify a bigger price tag. It feels like a fundraising strategy more than an operational/strategic business move. At face value, this sounds good from an investment standpoint. 50-year-old investors will recognize the Rock Band branding more than newer games. This feels totally targeted at investors. If this was a cheap acquisition, then I like it. It’s so hard to get good game development talent nowadays. So much so, that I respect and understand this approach to building out your creative team a few million dollars at a time. However, if they paid $100 million for this, I would say that seems off and likely a bad deal.

(All information was provided by Harmonix, Music Business Worldwide, and VentureBeat)