11/12/2025
We need MORE of these billionaires 🇺🇲🇺🇲
The billionaire who built Fortnite is secretly buying America's wilderness—not to build on it, but to save it forever.
His name is Tim Sweeney.
While most tech billionaires collect superyachts, private islands, and skyscrapers with their names on them, Sweeney is collecting something different.
Mountains. Forests. Rivers. Wilderness.
Over 60,000 acres across North Carolina and beyond—an area larger than half of Washington D.C.
But here's what makes his story remarkable: he's not building resorts. Not developing communities. Not extracting resources.
He's doing nothing.
And that's exactly the point.
Tim Sweeney created Epic Games—the company behind Fortnite, one of the most successful video games in history. The game has generated billions of dollars and created entire digital worlds where millions of people play every day.
But while he's been building virtual landscapes, he's been quietly protecting real ones.
It started in the early 2000s, long before Fortnite made him a household name. Sweeney was already wealthy from early gaming successes, and he had a problem.
The wild places he loved hiking as a kid were disappearing. Forests cut down. Mountains carved up for development. Streams dammed or polluted.
So he started buying land.
Not for profit. Not for prestige. For preservation.
He purchased Box Creek Wilderness in North Carolina—7,500 acres of pristine mountain forest.
Then Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi. Then Grandfather Mountain areas. Then vast stretches along the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Property after property, ecosystem after ecosystem.
And then he did something even more unexpected.
He gave much of it away.
Over 7,000 acres donated to conservation organizations like the Conservation Trust for North Carolina—with permanent easements ensuring the land can never be developed. Ever.
No resorts. No logging. No mining. No subdivisions.
Just wilderness. Forever.
Sweeney doesn't hold press conferences about it. No glossy campaigns. No buildings named after him. Most people have no idea he's one of the largest private conservationists in America.
He just quietly buys land and protects it.
When asked why, his answer is simple: "These places need to exist for their own sake."
Not for human use. Not for economic value. Just because wild places deserve to exist.
The irony is almost poetic.
The man who created one of the world's most popular virtual environments—where millions of people build, battle, and explore digital landscapes—is using that success to ensure real landscapes survive.
While players drop into fictional islands in Fortnite, Sweeney is preserving actual mountains, actual forests, actual ecosystems.
He's a billionaire who could buy anything, and he chose to buy nothing. Or rather, he chose to buy wilderness and do nothing with it.
In a world obsessed with development, with growth, with building bigger and flashier things, Sweeney's vision is radical in its simplicity:
Keep the wild places wild.
His conservation areas now include critical habitats for black bears, elk, salamanders, rare plants, and countless other species. They protect watersheds that supply drinking water to thousands of people. They preserve ancient forests that have stood for centuries.
And they'll stand for centuries more—because Sweeney made sure of it.
There's something profound about a man who builds digital worlds for a living understanding the irreplaceable value of the natural world.
Maybe it's because he knows the difference.
Virtual forests can be rebuilt with code. Real forests take hundreds of years to grow and seconds to destroy.
Digital mountains can be moved with a keystroke. Real mountains, once carved up, are gone forever.
He's created experiences for millions of people online. But he's also ensuring that future generations can experience something no game can ever replicate:
Standing in an actual forest. Breathing actual mountain air. Hearing actual streams flowing through untouched wilderness.
Tim Sweeney has made billions creating worlds that don't exist.
And he's spending those billions protecting worlds that do.
No fanfare. No ego. Just land purchased, protected, and preserved.
Because when the games end, when the servers shut down, when the digital worlds fade, it's the real world that remains.
And Sweeney is making sure parts of that real world remain wild, remain free, remain exactly as they've been for thousands of years.
The man known for building Fortnite might be remembered for something far more important:
Saving the forests.
One mountain at a time. One river at a time. One wilderness area at a time.
Quietly. Persistently. Permanently.
While millions play in the worlds he created, the real gift he's giving is to the world we all live in.
Because some legacies are built with code.
And some are built by leaving nature alone
