Epic Games Acquires God of War and Hellblade Facial Animation Company

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite and the widely used Unreal Engine, has acquired a company specializing in technology to create facial animations for games and movies. That technology has been used in God of War and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, among others.

Epic Games says in a press release that the acquired Cubic Motion has been a long-time partner and is one of the leading players in automated facial animation technology, which is used in games and movies, among other things. The technology that Epic Games gets its hands on will now be able to become part of the toolset of Unreal Engine users more often. The amount of money involved in the acquisition has not been disclosed.

Cubic Motion has teamed up with Lateral, a company that develops tools to realistically digitize human appearances and movements, acquired by Epic Games in January 2019. According to the website Gamesindustry.biz, all Cubic Motion employees are said to be transferring to Epic Games, although the acquired company will continue to work for existing customers.

Cubic Motion technology has been used in several games, including God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man. The company is also behind the facial animations in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which runs on the Unreal Engine. In 2016, at the Game Developers Conference, Epic Games showed how the facial movements of a flesh-and-blood person can be translated in real time to a character in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Cubic Motion and Epic Games also previously collaborated on two demonstration videos of “credible photorealistic, digital people.”