I worked at Epic Games for two years. This is real, and the strategy behind it is smarter than most people realize.
Tim Sweeney has spent nearly two decades buying North Carolina forest land. 50,000+ acres across 15 counties. He’s now one of the largest private landowners in the state. The purchases started in 2008, right after the real estate collapse wiped out developers who had been planning golf resorts and luxury communities on biodiverse wilderness.
Sweeney paid $15 million for Box Creek Wilderness, a 7,000-acre stretch in the Blue Ridge foothills containing 130+ rare and threatened species. Developers had owned 5,000 of those acres before the crash. He bought them for conservation prices when nobody else was bidding.
He runs the acquisitions through an LLC called “130 of Chatham.” He buys the land, holds it for years, then either donates it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, sells it at a discount to state parks, or hands it to land trusts. In 2021, he donated 7,500 acres in the Roan Highlands to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy. Largest private land donation in North Carolina history.
The part people miss: he told the News & Observer that since 2021, land got too expensive to keep buying. So he shifted focus to converting his existing 50,000 acres into permanent conservation status. He’s locking the land into legal structures that make development impossible regardless of who owns it in the future.
A billionaire worth roughly $6 billion is spending tens of millions acquiring wilderness specifically during economic downturns, then giving it away or placing it under permanent legal protection. The land will outlast him, Epic Games, and Fortnite.
That’s the part that separates Sweeney from billionaires who write checks to get their name on a building. The building depreciates. The forest compounds.
Microsoft is reportedly working on official Xbox and Xbox 360 emulation for Windows, potentially arriving in November as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations.
This could let your digital library run natively on PC through the Xbox app.
Left @FaZeClan
14 Years. Over half of my life, I’d be lying if I said this didn’t hurt, but it had to be done. Thank you to everyone who’s been apart of this journey, the best is yet to come.
Last year I launched Wildflower with my friend Isaac.. a 4-day workshop that brings together established & upcoming artists to share inspiration and ideas. Happy to announce the next workshop is taking place this November and applications are now open!! https://t.co/oJvgoEQjV3 🌷
The Queen in Black makes her move. Talk about Separation Anxiety...
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