The founder of Fortnite studio Epic Games, Tim Sweeney has now become a billionaire. This was reported by business publication Bloomberg. Sweeney is Epic’s majority individual shareholder which is worth between $5 billion and $8 billion.

Bloomberg doesn’t identify how they came up with this number, although they cite analysts who back them up. The company notes that Tencent owns 40% stake in the company, but Tim Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder.

To say that Fortnite has played a massive role in Epic Games’ success would be an understatement. The game has become a pop culture reference, and mentions of it can be heard everywhere from the World Cup to the music industry and movies.

The success of Epic Games can be traced back to the decision they made in 2012, to shift away from the big, market driven world of pricey games to a more flexible business model. This decision was internally known as Epic 4.0, and it was primarily driven by the development of Fortnite which originally began as a small indie title inside the studio.

Sweeney realized that giving Fortnite a free-to-play model would fare better for his company. He admitted this in an interview with Polygon, “There was an increasing realization that the old model wasn’t working anymore and that the new free to play model was the way to go.”

The tired old model of releasing a single titled game every once in a while was screeching to a grinding halt, and the industry was being built on ‘live games’ that were developed in real time. To get the necessary money to bring about their envisioned change, Epic entered into a deal with Tencent, selling them about 48% of the company’s outstanding shares for an estimated $330 million.

This allowed the company to drop the monthly charge for their game engine, instead giving it away for free to anyone who uses it, in exchange for a royalty cut. This resulted in a surge of profits.

But this won’t make Sweeney the first billionaire from gaming’s industry, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, Valve founder Gabe Newell has a net worth of $6.86 billion making him the 235th richest person on earth.  

Epic has been enjoying incredible success thanks to the larger following of their popular battle royale game Fortnite. It was released only a year ago but in that time it has attracted a massive following of over 125 million players. The game deploys a free-to-play model, but it is bringing in millions of revenue on a regular basis. The in-game purchases can be spent on a range of cosmetic items, which means that the gameplay won’t be affected.

To make the game even more interesting than it already is, the developers are planning on pouring some of this money back into the community, promising over $100 million worth of total prize money for the game’s competitive season.

Epic also announced another big development when it comes to their Unreal Engine marketplace, they will now pay creators 88 percent of sales, while taking only 12 percent. This is significantly lesser than the industry standard of 70/30 shares, and is one of the reasons that contribute to Fortnite’s enormous success.