Time Magazine has published its annual list of the 100 most influential companies. The only two game developers on the 2024 edition are Epic Games and Scopely.
Monopoly Go! (left), Fortnite (right)
According to the TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2024 list, Epic Games is one of the Pioneers along with companies like OpenAI, Overtime, Brightline, and Intuitive Machines. The magazine called the Fortnite maker the “app-economy equalizer” for its long-running fight against Apple and Google over app store fees and plans to launch its own mobile store this year.
“With Disney in February buying a $1.5 billion equity stake in Epic, the entertainment behemoth’s largest investment in the gaming industry, 2024 is shaping up to be a banner year for the North Carolina-based company,” Time’s Varsha Bansal wrote.
In addition to Fortnite, Epic Games also develops and operates Unreal Engine, one of the most popular engines for making games.
Scopely made the Innovators category along with AMD, Google, Huawei, Boston Metal, and Saildrone. The reason for its inclusion was the success of Monopoly Go!, which became the fastest mobile game to cross $1 billion in player spending. The game’s lifetime revenue now exceeds $2 billion.
“Mobile-video-game developer Scopely spent around seven years, about twice as long as expected, to perfect the free-to-play game that now has more than 10 million daily active players,” Time’s Solcyré Burga wrote.
Last year, Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group acquired Scopely for $4.9 billion in one of the largest M&A deals in games industry history.
There are other game-related firms on the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list. For example, Microsoft has Xbox and acts a platform holder, game developer, and publisher, while Amazon also has its own gaming division. However, video games are just part of their larger business, unlike Epic Games and Scopely.