David Bakalov — UEFN & Verse Developer
CTO at Genesis Studios, building in Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and Verse since before the platform's public launch. Island of the Year 2025 at The Game Awards, 75B+ minutes of combined playtime across shipped studios, and brand activations for American Express, Wimbledon, MrBeast, and Panda Express.
Selected work
- Genesis Squid Game — Island of the Year 2025 winner at The Game Awards.
- WIMBLEDON UP! — The official Wimbledon 2026 activation presented by AMEX: a competitive roguelike Only Up. Live now.
- Pressure: Surviving D-Day — The official Fortnite tie-in for the film PRESSURE, re-living the high-stakes true story of the D-Day weather forecast.
- Factory Deathrun — FOAD’s explosive deathrun. Nominated for Best User-Created Island in Fortnite at The Game Awards 2023.
- Beast Parkour — FOAD’s flagship parkour island: 250+ hand-built levels, peaking at 38,290 concurrent players. Lead Developer for the systems across the experience.
- Boom Tycoon 2 — Destruction-driven tycoon peaking at 24,525 concurrent players, and home to Panda Express’s first-ever gaming activation.
- Box Fight PvP — Competitive boxfighting at scale, peaking at 50,127 concurrent players.
- TMNT Red vs Blue — FOAD’s TMNT Red vs Blue: hero-vs-villain team combat with Ninja Turtle mythics and super-hero medallion powers.
- 1v1 With Every Gun — Team HIVE’s 1v1 With Every Gun, one of Fortnite’s biggest PvP maps. Designed the Underworld live event end to end, peaking at 83,200 concurrent players.
- Garden vs Brainrots — One of two lead developers on RvB’s Plants vs Brainrots world, branded as Garden vs Brainrots. Balance, content roadmap, weekly events, and live-ops.
- Crazy Red vs Blue — Live-ops on Crazy Red vs Blue, the biggest Red vs Blue map in Fortnite. Shipped the Ghost Revolver.
- BOOM: Boss Fight — Co-op boss battles with scripted multi-phase encounters.
- Freefall FFA — A vertical free-for-all where falling is half the fight.
- Diner Tycoon — Full systems and map development on Diner Tycoon, Dairy MAX’s Shorty Award-winning farm-to-table Fortnite world: #1 Top Rated in the U.S. and globally at launch.