Apple buys two-person game development company

Apple has made an unusual acquisition: instead of another tech startup, the corporation has acquired independent game studio RAC7 — the authors of the popular adventure game Sneaky Sasquatch.

The studio is based in Canada and consists of just two people — Jason Ennis and Jesse Ringrose. In 2019, their game Sneaky Sasquatch became part of the catalog of the subscription service Apple Arcade, and, considering everything, impressed Apple’s management so much that the company decided to deepen cooperation by fully integrating RAC7 into its team.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed, but given the modest scale of the studio, it is unlikely to be in the tens of millions.

Considering everything, Apple continues to strengthen the direction of Apple Arcade — and the purchase of RAC7 may not be the only one in this area. It is increasingly important for the company to have exclusive content, especially against the backdrop of increasing competition in the gaming segment.

New Apple Game Center

In addition, according to authoritative insider and Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, Apple plans to completely overhaul its gaming service, replacing the outdated Game Center with a new video game application that will be available on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. The announcement is expected on June 9 at the WWDC25 conference.

According to the leak, the new application will be installed on Apple devices in late 2025 and will become a centralized gaming platform – a launcher that combines:

• game achievements,

• leaderboards,

• the ability to communicate,

• other gaming features.

Gurman notes that in its idea and structure the new application resembles the Xbox App for iOS. At the same time, it will be separate not only from Game Center, but, possibly, from the Apple Arcade service.

It is important that rumors about such an initiative by Apple are not the first time: back in 2024, the 9to5Mac portal reported on the development of a separate game store for the iPhone ecosystem and other Apple devices. Now it becomes clear that this project was most likely in question.

For over 25 years, Unreal Engine has been one of the most popular tools for creating video games. Each new version expands the capabilities of developers, and Epic Games does not plan to stop there. In a recent interview for Lex Friedman’s podcast, Epic Games founder and engine author Tim Sweeney confirmed that work is underway on Unreal Engine 6.

According to Sweeney, you should not expect radical changes – the main focus is on eliminating the limitations of the current version of UE5. In particular, he admitted that the simulation of the gameplay process uses only one processor core, which simplifies optimization, but at the same time limits performance. This is especially noticeable in open-world games, which often suffer from low frame rates and technical problems.

Unreal Engine 6 is planned to implement full support for multi-core processors, which should improve overall performance and scalability. At the same time, Sweeney warned that a new version of the engine will not appear in the near future – its release is expected no earlier than in 2-3 years.

Currently, Epic Games continues to develop Unreal Engine 5 in two directions: a separate branch is created based on requests from external developers, the other is adapted to the needs of the Fortnite community.