Epic looks to continue its aggressive growth as a gaming service platform, as on Tuesday they announced they've purchased the services of studio Mediatonic, the developers behind the multiplayer battle royale platformer Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. Fall Guys was a hit with streamers and players in mid 2020 when the world was shut down due to the coronavirus and saw good success, until the popularity of Among Us exploded shortly thereafter.

https://twitter.com/Mediatonic/status/1366813026612092930?s=20

Fall Guys joins Rocket League and the global phenomenon Fortnite as another multiplayer option for consumers, perhaps this could potentially mean some crossover content could be inevitable, like stages, events, or skins. The prospects of adding some guns from Fortnite into Fall Guys would certainly change the meta to maintaining the crown. Since Epic owns Unreal Engine, it's not impossible, and its use is mentioned in a statement made by Mediatonic:

Fortnite and Rocket League already have tons of features we'd love to bring to Fall Guys—account systems, cross-play, squad vs. squad modes, etc... We're going to work hard on bringing more of these features to Fall Guys, too!

Epic Games' hawkish build to be a true competitor to Steam has been met with its share of criticism from fans, who feel their decision and methods lead to practices that aren't really consumer friendly since they bought Rocket League developer Pysonix in 2019. Fall Guys is an interesting get for them, because it's a game whose player base has dropped considerably since August 2020, where the average was 124,000 players. As of the last 30 days, its average user count has dropped below 9,000 on average. Fall Guys' launch on the Switch isn't going to be affected by this, so there's a chance that the Nintendo install base could provide a temporary boost to those numbers.