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Epic Games on AWS

Epic Games is the interactive entertainment company behind Fortnite, one of the world's most popular video games with over 400 million players. Founded in 1991, Epic transformed gaming with the release of Unreal Engine—the 3D creation engine powering hundreds of games now used across industries, such as automotive, film and television, and simulation, for real-time production. 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Epic Games (Epic) went all in on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2018 to deliver the storage, analytics, and scaling capabilities critical to its business, which had exploded with the release of Fortnite—an online game that’s seen over 15.3 million concurrent players during live events. Fortnite runs almost entirely on AWS, including its worldwide game-server fleet, backend services, and websites. Epic stores petabytes of data in an AWS data lake, then uses AWS analytics services to assess player sentiment and inform the development of unique experiences. Using tens of thousands of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances powered by AWS Graviton processors, Epic scales compute capacity at optimal price performance to support millions of global gamers every day, accelerate rendering workloads, and provide remote build pipelines for both its own and licensee Unreal Engine creators. On AWS, Epic has reduced the physical and time-consuming barriers to creating cutting-edge entertainment, compelling visualizations, and immersive virtual worlds.

CUSTOMER STORIES

Epic Games Enables Creators to Build Over 2 Million Digital Humans and Launches RealityScan App on AWS

2022

Epic is using GPU-based compute, data, and content delivery solutions on AWS to cost efficiently scale to millions of users and process petabytes of data in near real time to enable rapid development of digital humans, 3D models of real-world objects, and simulations of immersive worlds and empower the next generation of creators.

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Epic Games Launches RealityScan App on AWS and Announces 2M MetaHumans Milestone at re:Invent

2022

At AWS re:Invent 2022, Epic Games, a leading interactive entertainment company and provider of 3D engine technology, announced that RealityScan, powered by AWS, is now available as a free download on iOS. Using the highly performant infrastructure of AWS helps Epic to cost-efficiently scale RealityScan to support tens of thousands of creators—turning images into digital models of real-world objects that can be used in simulations, architecture, automotive, and film/TV projects.

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Screenshots from Epic Games' RealityScan

Virtual Production ft. Epic Games

AWS at SIGGRAPH 2021

In this keynote presentation at SIGGRAPH 2021, David Morin, industry manager at Epic Games, discusses the acceleration of modern virtual production in the cloud.

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Epic Games Delivers Entertainment Experiences at Global Scale on AWS

2021

Building on AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Epic delivers cutting-edge virtual entertainment experiences that connect millions of concurrent players all over the world. In this video, learn how Epic automatically scales compute capacity to meet constant fluctuations in player demand, supporting up to 30 times load during peak times while reducing operational costs using Savings Plans.

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Epic Games Uses AWS to Deliver Fortnite to 200 Million Players

AWS re:Invent 2018

In this presentation from re:Invent 2018, Chris Dyl, director of platform at Epic Games, shares how going all in on AWS has supported the company’s shift to a games as a service (GaaS) model. Epic leverages at least 32 different AWS services for the scalability, elasticity, and global reach required to support popular titles, such as Fortnite, which grew by more than 100 times in just 12 months and sees peak usage more than 10 times that of non-peak. To improve business outcomes, Epic’s entire analytics pipeline runs on AWS, delivering insights on service health, massive player tournaments, basic user data, and game design. 

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We decided to go all-in using AWS because they enable us to offer a quality gaming experience to millions of gamers around the world, simultaneously. We are excited to work with AWS to expand our use of analytics, machine learning, and containerized applications using Kubernetes to make our sizable infrastructure even easier to maintain."

Chris Dyl
Director of Platform, Epic Games


Compiling Unreal Engine 4 Dedicated Servers for AWS Graviton EC2 Instances

2021

To help developers of all shapes and sizes build, run, and grow amazing games, Epic Games and AWS collaborated to bolster AWS Graviton2 instance support for Unreal Engine. With AWS Graviton2 support, Unreal Engine creators can realize improved price performance of up to 40 percent over comparable current generation x86-based instances. Follow the step-by-step guide in this blog to create a dedicated game server with Unreal Engine and AWS Graviton2 instances.

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Virtual Production and the Rise of the Microstudio on Unreal Engine and AWS

2020

Epic’s Unreal Fellowship offers in-depth training and funding for film, animation, and VFX professionals to use Unreal Engine for real-time media production. In this blog, Unreal Fellow Hasraf “HaZ” Dulull explains how the combination of Unreal Engine’s state-of-the-art virtual production tools with the powerful but cost-effective capabilities of AWS has facilitated the dawn of the “microstudio," giving small teams the ability to create movie-quality content in real time. 

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As we look to the future and building increasingly immersive and compelling experiences for players, we are excited to use AWS Graviton3-based EC2 C7g instances. Our testing has shown they are suitable for even the most demanding latency-sensitive workloads while providing significant price performance benefits and expanding what is possible within Fortnite and any Unreal Engine created experience."

Mark Imbriaco
Senior Director of Engineering, Epic Games


Epic Games Leverages AWS To Deliver Fortnite to More Than 250 Million Players Worldwide While Driving 100x Growth in Just 12 Months

2019

In 2012, Epic began a major transformation to become a GaaS developer, launching games that evolve via regular updates. Now, with AWS at the core, Epic has a global infrastructure with the scalability and elasticity to support millions of concurrent players on games like Fortnite and provide unique online experiences—such as hosting the largest concert in history.      

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Find out how AWS for Games transforms game workloads with purpose-built cloud services and solutions.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

RE:INVENT

2021
How Epic Games Develops Fortnite Faster with a Build Farm on AWS
In this session from re:Invent 2021, Alex Carberry, infrastructure architect at Epic Games, shares how the company migrated its internal build farm from on premises to AWS. Using Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and other AWS solutions, Epic drastically improved development iteration times and its rapid release cycle to continually deliver fresh content to Fortnite players around the world.
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RE:INVENT

2020
Epic Games Supports Creators During COVID-19 Pandemic with Unreal Engine and AWS
In this session from re:Invent 2020, Marc Petit, general manager of Unreal Engine for Epic Games, shares how Epic uses AWS Thinkbox, NICE DCV, and Amazon EC2 G4 instances to provide remote workstations and rapidly scale rendering workloads for creators working virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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GUIDE

2020
Guide to Scalable Data for Games on AWS
This guide details how different types of AWS databases and storage solutions can be used for game development and offers best practices for optimizing performance and player experience, including sample architecture diagrams for content workflows and analytics pipelines.
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PRESS CENTER

2018
Epic Games Goes All-In on AWS
In 2018, Epic announced it was going all-in on AWS. This press release offers more details on why Epic made AWS its choice in infrastructure for its worldwide game server fleet, backend platform systems, databases, and websites. An AWS customer since 2012, Epic has consistently expanded its use of services, including AWS analytics, machine learning, and containerized solutions to continually improve gameplay.
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FROM OUTSIDE AWS

2023
Epic Games Taps AWS Local Zones for Fortnite’s NA-Central Servers

Epic Games uses AWS Local Zones to support its new NA-Central server region in Fortnite. This new server region brings low latency gameplay to more players in the central United States and Mexico.

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WIRED

2021
Changing the Game
The clip of innovation for a game with Fortnite’s size, scale, and reach is no small feat. When Epic learned of the AWS Graviton2 processor, it saw an opportunity to change the approach to its central challenge: continual innovation. While Graviton2 has been woven into Fortnite’s game servers and voice chat capabilities, its most profound impact has been as the driver of scalability and continual innovation for Fortnite’s Creative mode.
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