Sweeney described the history of the company in 2016 as four eras: the shareware era from founding through 1997 as the company grew to 15 employees; the Unreal era from 1998 to 2005 as the company focused on developing that franchise through external publishers and grew to 25 employees; the Gears of War era from 2006 to 2011 as the company shifted focus to console games and grew to around 200 employees; and the current era where the company moved back to PC games and self-publishing, spinning off or closing some of its subsidiary developers such as People Can Fly and Big Huge Games.[3] This latter era has instead become dominated by the multi-platform Fortnite Battle Royale and related games, which is one of the most-played video game franchises of all time with over 350 million registered players.[4] Epic Games has developed around 40 games since 1991 and published over 20 more, and has multiple games under development.