Epic Games Acquires Quixel, Gives Away Free Assets

Epic Games recently earned itself some good boy points for making a World War 1 memorial in Fortnite that anyone can visit. Maybe not enough good boy points to make up for the constant crunch business, but between that and their willingness to say ‘yeah if a Fortnite pro decided to stand up for Hong Kong we wouldn’t punish them’, it seems Epic Games is sort of on a roll when it comes to good deeds. And while this latest act of ‘charity’ comes with a lot of important complications, the news is still ultimately ‘good’ for people, so I’m willing to give them credit for it.

Here’s the news: Epic games just acquired Quixel.



Quixel, if you didn’t know (because I sure as hell didn’t) is a company that made its living scanning and creating high-quality recreations of real-life objects and locations in the digital space. Or, to put in more simple terms, they make really good assets for 3D art and games. With this acquisition, their expansive library of over 10,000 assets will be released on the Unreal engine, completely free for people who already use it. Right now, the selection is limited to ten high resolution packs, but more will be made available in the future to whoever wants it.

This is part of an ongoing effort by Epic Games to bring value to the Unreal Engine, which has included making a lot of assets free for people who use it. If you recall, they did something similar to Paragon when they shut that MOBA down. It’s a naked attempt to make their own engine more valuable, so it’s not wholly charitable, but it does give a lot of resources to a lot of people for free – and they’re even offering refunds to people who have Megascaners subscriptions and the Unreal Engine – so as I mentioned, I’m willing to give it to them.

Even if this news probably doesn’t affect us at this exact moment.