Epic Games made its name with big budget action games like the Gears of War series, but studio founder Tim Sweeney says that times have changed, and Epic has to change with them.

“The economics of those games forces developers to work with major publishers to succeed, and that seems to be irreversible,” Sweeney said in a recent interview with Polygon.

According to Sweeney, Epic will be moving away from massive franchises and will instead focus on more sustainable game models like its upcoming free-to-play online title, Paragon.

“We realized that the business really needed to change its approach quite significantly,” Sweeney said. “We were seeing some of the best games in the industry being built and operated as live games over time rather than big retail releases.”

“We recognized that the ideal role for Epic in the industry is to drive that, and so we began the transition of being a fairly narrow console developer focused on Xbox to being a multi-platform game developer and self publisher, and indie on a larger scale.”

Aside from games like Gears of War and Unreal Tournament, Epic is probably best known in the industry for its popular game engine, Unreal Engine, which has been used by numerous studios in the development of well known games like the Batman: Arkham series and the Mass Effect trilogy. That latest version of the engine includes built-in support for virtual reality game development, and it has already been used to create a number of VR games, most notably Eve: Valkyrie and Epic’s own Gunjack.

While Epic’s games have been successful, Sweeney noted that the Unreal Engine has been a cornerstone of the studio’s business.

“If we didn’t have the engine, we would have died,” Sweeney said. “We would have died three times.”

Unreal Engine continues to be a popular choice for major game studios, but Epic’s shift to smaller games is likely a sign that the studio is looking to make sure that it is not being held up by its game engine alone.

Image courtesy of Epic Games