The big picture: Epic in 2012, realizing changes were coming to the gaming industry, altered its course. Epic 4.0 has been a major success, pushing the company to new heights and helping it define a new genre of gaming.

Epic Games in 2018 had a year that it won't soon forget, capped off by an impressive $3 billion profit haul according to a source familiar with the matter as reported by TechCrunch.

Again, that's profit, not simply revenue.

Epic isn't a publicly traded company, thus electing to keep its financial details under wraps. There's little reason to doubt the source's credibility, however, given the continued success of Fortnite. The game found its way to several new platforms this year and continues to keep players' attention with regular "season" updates.

Fortnite isn't Epic's only moneymaker. The developer also generates revenue from the use of its Unreal game engine and other titles it has developed. Epic also recently launched its own digital distribution platform and narrowed its focus by ending development of the Unreal Tournament reboot project and pulling the Infinity Blade series from the App Store.

As Polygon highlights, Epic's success isn't a mere coincidence. In 2012, the studio gave up a 40 percent stake to China's Tencent in exchange for $330 million to help fund a new era. The team realized that the gaming industry was changing; budgets for console games were swelling, returns were diminishing, "live" games were becoming a thing and smartphones were going to change everything.

Epic used its newfound money to restructure and prepare for the future of gaming. So far, the decision appears to have paid off. Earlier this year, the company closed a $1.25 billion round of funding that valued Epic at $15 billion.