How Epic came to embrace free-to-play and games-as-a-service

So Epic wound up bringing in Riot owner Tencent as an investor, and revising its Fortnite project to be free-to-play.

Sweeney said, noting that Epic had grown frustrated with the restraints of working with Microsoft as a publisher.

Later it axed Unreal Engine’s subscription model in favor of a free (to download, at least) distribution scheme, rebooted Unreal Tournament as a free-to-play, community-developed game ahead and started work on its own free-to-play MOBA: Paragon.