Epic CEO and billionaire Tim Sweeney has been using some of his cash to buy up 50,000 acres of forest so it can’t be flattened
Tim Sweeney, the CEO and co-founder of Epic Games, is not short of a quarter or two: depending on which estimate you go with, he’s worth anywhere between $5 billion and $9 billion. And it turns out that Sweeney has been using some of his cash to one admirable end: buying up swathes of forest in North Carolina, purely to protect it from development.
A new report in The Times of India points out that this has ended up with Sweeney becoming one of the largest private landowners in the state, with his holdings amounting to roughly 50,000 acres of land over 15 counties. That’s roughly 78 square miles of forest, the size of a small city.
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“Most of my big conservation land purchasing breakthroughs came when the economy was in poor shape and land was prudently priced,” said Sweeney. “Since 2021, the economy has been stronger, land has become more expensive, and my focus has moved to getting large blocks of contiguous conservation lands I’ve acquired since 2009 into permanent conservation.”
In 2021 Sweeney donated 7,500 acres in the Roan Highlands to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, which marks the largest private land donation in North Carolina history.”
“This extraordinary gift ensures that these remarkable mountain landscapes will remain intact forever,” said Carl Silverstein of the conservancy when the land transfer was announced. The Roan Highlands are known for rare spruce-fir ecosystems and are one of the most diverse regions in the southern Appalachians.
There is of course a more cynical way to look at this, involving financial advisers doing financial advisor things. Others will point out that the money involved represents a fraction of Sweeney’s total wealth. But the upshot remains the same regardless: the forests and wilderness don’t get flattened and developed.
As Sweeney said in 2021: “If you can protect land permanently, it will outlast any one person.” So the next time you buy a Sabrina Carpenter skin on Fortnite, rest assured a little chunk of your V-Bucks really are doing some good.
