Industry giant Epic Games has acquired Tonic Games, the parent outfit of British studio Mediatonic.

Mediatonic has a sizeable backlog of releases but may be best known as the developer of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, the online battle royale that took the market by storm last year. 

“It’s no secret that Epic is invested in building the metaverse and Tonic Games shares this goal," said Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney.

"As Epic works to build this virtual future, we need great creative talent who know how to build powerful games, content and experiences.”

Tonic Games CEO and co-founder Dave Bailey added: "At Tonic Games Group we often say that 'everyone deserves a game that feels like it was made for them.’ With Epic, we feel like we have found a home that was made for us. They share our mission to build and support games that have a positive impact, empower others and stand the test of time and we couldn’t be more excited to be joining forces with their team.”

The details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Epic empire 

Epic has been slowly upping its acquisition efforts but has leaned more into snapping up firms in the tech space to flesh out Unreal Engine, such as animation studio Cubic Motion, and more recently, development firm RAD Game Tools. Tonic Games may be the company's largest games acquisition since it snapped up Rocket League developer Psyonix in 2019.

Meanwhile, Epic is still embroiled in an ongoing dispute with Apple and Google following the platform's decisions to remove Fortnite from its storefronts. Back in August last year, Epic tried to circumnavigate storefront fee cuts by introducing its own payment system. The court battle over that particular debacle is scheduled to take place in May 2021.

The company also recently dispelled rumours that it would be heading towards an IPO soon enough. A spokesperson for the company told GameSpot that its priority is still private funding.