They made a lot of money.
> it only buys popular software, because it's goal is getting more people locked into it's walled garden Epic store.
The rev stream is royalties from engine use since the free tiers are locked to UE, not EGS.
> They made a lot of money.
They reportedly worked with Epic Games on technical support for PUBG features, and Epic Games may've ended up using some of them in their own Battle Royale mode:
> Notably, Epic Games updated their in-development title Fortnite, a sandbox-based survival game that included the ability to construct fortifications, to include a battle royale mode that retained the fortification aspects. Known as Fortnite Battle Royale, Epic later released it as a standalone free-to-play game in September 2017. Shortly after its release, Bluehole expressed concerns about the game, acknowledging that while they cannot claim ownership of the battle royale genre, they feared that since they had been working with Epic for technical support of the Unreal engine, that they may have had a heads-up on planned features they wanted to bring to Battlegrounds and could release it first.
Quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds#Epic_Games...
Article: https://www.pcgamer.com/pubg-exec-clarifies-objection-to-for...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/27/17509114/pubg-fortnite-la...
Personally, I'm all against what they did with Fortnite and PUBG - they didn't broke any laws, but the surely reworked Fortnite into PUBG,instead of creating their own thing (it is now). But that's a long shot from saying they committed a crime or that their acquisitions turn up bad.
There lawsuits seem a bit empty