Self-taught programmer from Maryland who built Fortnite began buying North Carolina wilderness in 2009; today, his land holdings exceed 54,000 acres as he works with conservation groups to save them from developers

Millions of people know Tim Sweeney because of a virtual world he orchestrated from his parents' home in Maryland. He is the founder and CEO of Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, where players build, battle and explore landscapes that exist only on screens. But Sweeney has also spent substantial time form his time building something in the real world, which is very grounded. Quietly and largely out of the spotlight, he has acquired more than 50,000 acres of land in North Carolina to protect forests from development.

According to The News & Observer, Sweeney’s limited liability companies control at least 54,698 acres across 990 parcels in 15 North Carolina counties. His holdings are concentrated in places including Chatham County and the state’s western mountains.

The programmer who turned a hobby into Epic Games

Sweeney was born and raised in Potomac, Maryland, and taught himself programming through experimentation with computers, including an Apple II and a PC. At 20, he released ZZT, a game he had developed while programming as a hobby. He later attended the University of Maryland, where he studied mechanical engineering.

It was during college that he founded Epic MegaGames, which would later become Epic Games. In a 2009 interview with Gamasutra (later Game Developer), Sweeney recalled that the company initially consisted essentially of one person working from his parents’ house. His engineering education also proved useful in ways he had not anticipated, particularly when he began working on 3D graphics and rendering.

Epic eventually created Unreal Engine and later launched Fortnite in 2017. The game's enormous global success helped transform Sweeney's company and his personal fortune. Forbes listed his real-time net worth at approximately $4.2 billion as of September 2026.

His other massive project is not a video game

While Epic was becoming a major force in gaming, Sweeney was developing a very different interest.

He became interested in hiking and the forests of North Carolina. Over time, he began purchasing land he believed was vulnerable to development. According to The News & Observer, Sweeney began assembling large, contiguous blocks of property around 2009, since the Great Recession of 2008 made land prices cheaper.

In 2018, the same year Sweeney became a billionaire following the global success of Fortnite, he purchased a roughly 10-acre parcel in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

The property had once belonged to the Matis–Steele family, whose great-grandfather had owned the land. Sweeney later sold the parcel back to the family for the same price he had paid.

“Most of my big conservation land purchasing breakthroughs came when the economy was in poor shape and land was prudently priced,” Sweeney told The News & Observer in 2025. His purchases eventually stretched across 15 counties and involved thousands of separate parcels.

Sweeney has given thousands of acres to conservation

Some of Sweeney's conservation work has involved donating land rather than keeping it under private ownership. In 2016, he donated about 7,000 acres of forest east of Asheville to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, according to The News & Observer. Five years later, he gave another 7,500 acres near the Avery-Mitchell county border to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy.

He also worked with conservation organizations in 2021 to protect a roughly two-mile coastal barrier south of Topsail Island, according to the outlet.

More than 50,000 acres are tied to his land companies

Sweeney, now the third-richest person in North Carolina, does not hold all of the land directly in his own name. According to the outlet, several limited liability companies associated with him, including 130 of Chatham, 131 of Chatham, 132 of Chatham, Rocky River Hydro LLC and Box Creek Ltd., control at least 54,698 acres across 990 parcels in 15 counties.

In Chatham County alone, he controls roughly 16,000 acres.

He has slowed buying and focused on protecting what he already owns

Sweeney's conservation strategy has evolved. As land became more expensive after 2021, he said his focus moved away from simply acquiring more property and toward ensuring that existing holdings could receive permanent protection.

One example came when Sweeney partnered with The Conservation Fund to sell 238 acres of spruce-fir forest to the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation for $3.59 million, helping expand Mount Mitchell State Park.

The billionaire remains unusually low-key

Outside Epic Games, Sweeney has maintained a remarkably low-key lifestyle for someone whose fortune was built on one of the world's biggest video games. He enjoys hiking, tinkering with technology, Diet Coke and fried chicken from Bojangles'. He has also kept Epic Games rooted in Cary, North Carolina, rather than relocating the company to Silicon Valley.

The scale of the business behind his fortune, however, is anything but modest. Fortnite attracts an estimated 110 million to 120 million monthly active users, while its average daily player base stands at roughly 2.2 million to 3 million. The game has also recorded peak concurrent audiences of about 1.5 million to 2 million players, with major live events pushing its all-time peak to around 14.3 million concurrent players.