Since 2008, Fortnite creator Tim Sweeney has spent over $200 million acquiring more than 50,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness to protect it from development
Rich people do this as a tax loophole. They allow you to deduct what the land would have been worth IF DEVELOPED allowing them to basically make up a number out of thin air. Buy land for 5 million. Make up how much it could be worth if developed into a 5 star resort or some dumb shit that probably would t actually be economically viable and get a 230 million dollar tax deduction again your actual income.
I mean… I hope it preserves the planet and all. But meanwhile we are already drowning in shit water and government debt because the rich won’t pay their fair share of taxes.
They do the same thing with art. Buy a painting for 40k. Say it is worth 20 million (have it appraised by “your” appraiser” when donating it to a non-profit museum. And boom. You just saved yourself a shit ton in taxes. But the government expenses didn’t change so really they are off loading tax burden to the middle class which can’t afford to do shit like that.
A decent portion of the high end art and relic trade is just tax evasion.
That’s not actually how it works. The land isn’t appraised on a made up number of what you could develop there but rather on the value of the acreage and the extractable resources like timber, etc.
Can you give a source on this? Seems like a misunderstanding that gets pushed in the comments and that people love to repeat.
Like your land isn’t suddenly worth more because you make up a number. Your undeveloped land might have a value based on what the land could be worth, but that number is relevant to what you buy it for. If you bought it on the market dor $5m and list it in your holdings as being worth $230m it’s going to be fraud every time.
Also what’s the tax deduction you get for owning some forests? Google is leading me to believe that if you hire people to maintain the woodlands you may be able to deduct those costs from your taxes, but the value of the woods doesn’t really seem to matter. In fact I’d think that a higher property value would just lead to higher property taxes.
They made it up. Like yeah, it's possible to commit tax fraud like the art example, but they audit a certain percent of those. You and the charitable foundation people risk going to jail for just making up wild numbers in a clearly fictious scheme for write offs. I'm sure it happens sometimes, like all tax fraud. But they're implying it's completely widespread and standard.
He often ranted against Steam informing customers, if the game they are looking at was created with AI.
Basically, he says that the customer should not be informed what he buys.
Which is a fucking dogshit opinion.
Better to be unlikeable and doing some good for the planet and the future, rather than being likeable and picking up another yacht as a ‘little treat’.
I roll my eyes every time this blatant propaganda comes up on reddit.
The guy recently fired 1000 people and raised prices of all the microtransaction garbage in fortnite and complains endlessly on twitter about steam's stance on forcing devs to label their AI usage in games.
It's insane to me that someone who is trying to conserve huge swathes of land is also in full support of the massive surge in AI data centers. Maybe he just doesn't want the damage to happen in his own back yard?
Sorry, but nah. I'm tired of these people trying to buy their way to likeability.
Whatever you might feel about the act, the problem is that he gets to decide what to spend the money on. Money that, in large proportion, should belong to the taxpayer.
It's so obvious this is the kind of thing you should do if you get filthy rich. The billionaire hoarders are all miserable with broken lives, kids hate them etc.
the creator luckily earns some money from it but epic games isn't an ethical company edit: and he as the CEO is a part of the problem, epic games should be treated harshly
Yeah sounds like something we should be doing with our tax dollars instead of killing kids and fuckin’ kidnapping people, don’t ever trust rich fuckers this sounds like a PR move to me.
Tim is still a massive knob even if he owns 50,000 acres of wilderness to "protect it." He would build AI data centers on it the instant he had a chance.
One of the most profound statements in this area I've heard is, if we don't make eco friendly logging possible in the wealthy nations, then guess where our logs come from????
That's right, places that don't give a shit about modern safe forestry practices and ecosystem protection.
So it's a really important balancing act to make sure we continue here and also do it right.
Oh what an environmental saint, i wonder how he feels about the environment now with all of his ai usage to make fartshite even worse than it already was
That's great but wished things like this weren't up to the whim of billionaires. Cause in 10years there's nothing stopping him from just turning this all into a data center or strip mall. I'm just against one dude owning so much of the planet.
Hopefully his wealth will enable him to counter bribe the politicians who spearhead the effort to take the land via eminent domain to clear the land for urgently needed data centers.
Edit: after reading some of the other comments calling him out as a supporter of AI,
it seems like he might build data centers on that land himself.
Stop posting this while Epic games is so deep into AI that less than one of their data centers cancels out what saving this forest did for the environment.
This is something a lot of companies do to try and claim they're offsetting their carbon emissions. They buy up acres of wilderness that were already at extremely low risk of logging for dirt cheap.
massive W for north carolina. they have some of the most beautiful land in the country, it’s awesome to see it being protected in a big way. good for you Tim Sweeney and good for you NC 👍👍
I bet he's developing the land for a real life Battle Royal tournament. If we start seeing rundown school busses being flown in attached to giant balloons, we will know whatsup.
So basically- a rich guy buys land to then borrow against to avoid paying as much tax?
Like I’m not mistaken right? This is just a PR spin on tax avoidance surely. Basically all billionaires do this in one form or another. It’s an easy way for them to hoard wealth.
A billionaire AI CP enjoyer protects a small patch of land because it means something to him personally while knowingly destroying the rest of the planet and screwing over his employees and suddenly he's Jesus, now THIS is a true Reddit moment.
Unless he has things locked away in an irreversible land trust, nothing is worth celebrating. Plus how many thousands of workers were laid off from Epic Games? To save the company like a half BILLION dollars?
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u/SouthFine639 12h ago
yea because he wants to do real life Fortnite, he’s just building the map