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Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

⁨365⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Pxtl@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://kotaku.com/epic-games-store-fortnite-unreal-engine-layoffs-1850882501

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Comments

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  • souma@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    TiL Epic had purchased BandCamp

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    • DocBlaze@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      God damnit if I didn’t open this post to write this, verbatim

      Honestly after unity shit the bed and payday 3 looks like a turd they probably realized they don’t need to try as hard anymore on unreal and fortnite, respectively

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  • Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Selling Bandcamp

    Thank god, keep your grimy fingers off my music, Sweeney.

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    • Hunter2@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Monkey’s paw: Google buys it

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      • Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        At the same time, Epic is divesting itself of Bandcamp, a deeply strange acquisition in the first place. It’s being sold to Songtradr.

        Not today, monkey’s paw.

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      • BigVault@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        In the not too distant future:

        Today we’re announcing we’re ending support for Bandcamp and merging it to YouTube music….

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    • zecg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I might be jaded, but I’d wager that whoever buys it, is going to be worse than having Epic as a rich daddy who is focused on and making money through his core business and doesn’t really know what to do with Bandcamp. Entities that buy it are almost certainly going to squeeze harder at the expense of user experience.

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      • exocortex@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Why don’t we buy it?

        Could this be a kickstarter?

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  • 332@feddit.nu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah, people speculated that this was coming.

    Also, why the hell do they own bandcamp, lol.

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    • Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I dunno, company that sells digital content for young people buys company that sells other digital content for young people. I can see the synergy there.

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      • elvith@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Wait… They sell games? I thought, they’d just gift you some every week!

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    • Vordus@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They wanted to use it to sell music licences for games and media production and the like. But it never really worked out, so they’ve sold it to a company that already actually knows how to do that.

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    • ryper@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      A good reason would have been potential “synergies” with Harmonix, which they also own, but I don’t recall ever seeing anything about that. Collaboration between the company that sells music and the company that makes music games seems like a no-brainer to me.

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    • zecg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Also, why the hell do they own bandcamp, lol.

      Because a gaming company with a successful battle royale is like a mule with a spinning wheel or something.

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  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Thank fucking god they’re selling Bandcamp before they had a chance to ruin it🙏

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    • ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Now it’ll go to some private equity vampire who will really ruin it

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      • Vordus@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It went to Songtradr, who are mostly a music licencing company. So I’m guessing that at least initially things are going to stay the same but that musicians are going to get nagged into letting 7digital put their stuff up on their big licencing store. And then enshittification, because that’s how absolutely everything is going.

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  • ryper@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They’re also increasing the price of V-Bucks to try to get even more money out of Fortnite players.

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    • guacupado@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This is the part that blows my mind. When you have a money-printing machine like Fortnite and you still manage to lose money, maybe it’s the CEO you need to be firing.

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  • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The Bandcamp sale is hopefully good news. Songtradr looks like they’re just in the music business and don’t (front their Wikipedia page) have any obviously dodgy investors.

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    • magikmw@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Narrator: No dodgy investors… Yet.

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      • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Indeed

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    • Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They also bought 7digital.com this year, which is a site I sometimes buy MP3s from since they have a better selection of mainstream record-label stuff than Bandcamp (no Amazon MP3s here in Canada).

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  • elscallr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Godot seeing both Unity and Epic implode in the same month: “now’s the time”

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  • honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The second good news for Godot today and I’m here for it

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    • dandroid@dandroid.app ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      People are losing their jobs. Their families are going to be in serious distress. I don’t wish layoffs on anyone.

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      • brawleryukon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Man, Gamers™ get fuckin’ vicious when it comes to things like this that make them click different icons than the ones they like. It’s pretty gross.

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      • elscallr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Having been through a few myself… it sucks but you plan for it. Technology is rapidly changing. If you’re employed at a tech company you need to plan to be at another I’ve shortly because the companies implode quickly as the technology evolves.

        You adapt or you don’t. There’s nothing sad about it, it’s the way it is.

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      • honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The reason they’re going through layoffs is because they hired unsustainably and chose to do layoffs instead of reducing salaries. This is something that is far more often avoided with democratically owned and community driven projects like Godot, or even better, worker cooperatives and unionised workplaces, where e.g. Mandrogon chose to be more careful, and unionised auto-workers in Germany chose a temporary pay-cut during a recession to avoid having to fire people.

        I’m not happy that these people got fired, but there’s a systemic problem here and Godot and other democratic structures of ownership help to alleviate that

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    • Phanatik@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How does this help Godot?

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      • kiku123@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I guess that since Epic owns Unreal Engine that bad news for Epic means good news for Godot?

        I don’t think that Epic is going to want to divest from Unreal considering how much money it makes.

        I also don’t think that it’s a zero-sum game. As a developer I want Unreal (and Unity) to be great so it creates more competition. Unreal has led the way in a lot of cool gaming tech that Godot is picking up.

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  • scytale@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I wonder what this means for bandcamp. It’s one of the only few options where musicians can actually earn from their work.

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    • thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Like other commenters here, I’m hopeful. Epic owning Bandcamp was pretty scary. They never really answered questions about it and a lot of folks were worried it could have gone the Epic Store route. Epic might honestly have sucked up all the data and sold it off already, though. We don’t know what the future will hold; I feel like no Epic is at worst a neutral position. Songtradr is at least in the music business and isn’t headed by Tim Sweeney.

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  • Jaysyn@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The effects of the SVB bankruptcy are still rippling out.

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    • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think this might have more to do with the beating that Epic took from Apple in court. The 2021 decision of their lawsuit for anti-competitive behavior against Apple was upheld this year. That was not cheap to litigate that.

      I think the Bandcamp sell off is a good indicator of all of this. Epic obtained Bandcamp in March 2022, to explicitly have their IAP system integrated into it. Google shut them down and told them they would start collecting the 30% usual due. Epic filed suit and Google gave them an exception for the time being with the agreement that 10% would be held in escrow until the conclusion of the trail. With many of the arguments in the Apple case similar to Google's case, I'm pretty sure Epic sees the loss coming from a mile away.

      All in all, what I think can be drawn from this. Epic made a big bet on "their store" and that's fading away with mobile devices locking people into a marketplace that is "distinctly not Epic". While putting such a bet wouldn't normally kill a company, Epic sextupled down on it and I think how hard they went for "their marketplace" is what's done them in.

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      • LetMeEatCake@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That and the EGS seem to be where Epic funneled all their profits from the height of Fornite. That neither has worked out puts them on shakier ground. How many billions of dollars has been spent on EGS with it being way behind their revenue targets?

        As things stand, Epic has very little in the way of a next big revenue source when Fortnite starts to fade as something new takes its place. That (probably) isn’t right around the corner but it will happen eventually. Their bet was on running major digital storefronts; that hasn’t worked out. UE will continue to make good money but not anywhere near enough to sustain the company as it is. UE is simply far smaller than something like FN.

        This is likely them realizing this in conjunction with what you said. They need a new big revenue source in the pipeline, since digital storefronts won’t be it. Whatever that next thing is will need lots of money.

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    • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      SVB has nothing to do with this, it’s crazy that people think that SVB is a cause and not a symptom.

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    • spudwart@spudwart.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think you’re thinking of GarageBand.

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      • infinitepcg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        or Bootcamp

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  • SVcross@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s some… That’s some… Epic layoff.

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  • soulfirethewolf@lemdro.id ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It’s funny really. They probably could continued growth had Tim Sweeney just swallowed his pride and accepted the 30% commission rate. Instead, the game has a nearly non-existent prominence on mobile because of it.

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  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Good thing I’m developing all of my games in Unreal right now.

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    • dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How many children have you created so far?

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  • Phegan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Didn’t they just buy Bandcamp?

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  • SRo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Lol

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