Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce
kotaku.com
The company behind Fortnite and the Unreal Engine is also reported to be selling off Bandcamp
  • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
    8·
    9 months ago

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

      • Vordus@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        9 months 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 Songtradr put their stuff up on their big licencing store. And then enshittification, because that’s how absolutely everything is going.

        • beefcat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          as of right now Songtradr is still run by actual musicians so it probably won’t be so bad

          but that could always change down the road

    • guacupado@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months 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.

  • soulfirethewolf@lemdro.idEnglish
    1·
    9 months 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.

  • 332@feddit.nu
    English
    1·
    9 months ago

    Yeah, people speculated that this was coming.

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

    • Pxtl@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      9 months 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. Epic Games Store and Bandcamp aren’t that far apart.

      • elvith@feddit.deEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

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

  • edric@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

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

    • thesmokingman@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      9 months 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.

  • Jaysyn@kbin.social
    02·
    9 months ago

    The effects of the SVB bankruptcy are still rippling out.

    Also, I thought Apple owned Bandcamp.

    • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
      1·
      9 months ago

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

      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.

  • harpuajim@lemmy.mlEnglish
    02·
    9 months ago

    Does Lemmy (this community specifically) circlejerk as hard as reddit does when it comes to Epic bad?

    • guacupado@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Why do people always say this as if these forums are some niche group and not a huge spread of the general population?

      If you’re seeing multiple communities with a general opinion, maybe it’s “people hate them” instead of “why do all these different groups hate the same thing?”

    • JasSmith@kbin.social
      01·
      9 months ago

      It’s getting pretty tiring on Reddit. You’d think Sweeney were Hitler. I get that Epic’s exclusives were annoying, but they also give us free games every week. The hate is far past justification.

    • Pxtl@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      02·
      9 months ago

      Very yes. I like Lemmy but there’s a lot of “corporation bad giv updoot” here.

      • Phanatik@kbin.social
        1·
        9 months ago

        There’s so few instances of corporations doing actually good things so opinions tend to skew negative. Epic hasn’t been thought of fondly since they started doing those exclusivity deals to try and bring people to their platform rather than making their platform a worthy competitor to Steam.