Recent industry news doing the rounds is from Epic Games, who yesterday publicly shared an email that was sent by Tim Sweeney about laying off 16% of the company. 830 people lost their job due to "spending way more money than we earn" as they continue "investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators".
That is a lot of people, and clearly shows that Epic Games have been relying a lot on Fortnite money. While Fortnite is "starting to grow again" Sweeney said it's being driven now by player-made content which has "significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion".
In the post Sweeney mentioned how Epic has been making efforts to reduce costs like "moving to net zero hiring and cutting operating spend on things like marketing and events" but all of this "ended up far short of financial sustainability" so getting rid of staff was "the only way" they could stabilize.
Epic is also selling off Bandcamp to B2B music company Songtradr, which they only acquired in 2022, as clearly they didn't actually have a business plan for it to sell it off so quickly. They're also spinning off most of SuperAwesome that they acquired in 2020, who say they are acquiring most of it back themselves directly.
Psyonix, maker of Rocket League, was also(1) affected(2) since Epic acquired them back in 2019 and then made it exclusive to the Epic Store.
The developer Mediatonic who made Fall Guys was also impacted by this, since Epic acquired them in 2021 and then made Fall Guys exclusive to the Epic Store. It's not clear how badly they've been affected but Ed Fear (Game Lead) who was laid off showed off a picture on X that showed "Decimated", with many others also posting about being let go so Mediatonic appears to have been hit quite hard by this.
No doubt the exclusives and constant free games on the Epic Store cost a lot of monies.
What do you think to this news? Leave a comment.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
slaapliedje Sep 30, 2023
Quoting: StoneColdSpiderYeah, it's like when a company buys another one for their IP... then fires off all the engineers that created said IP. It's dumb as shit. Buy a company for their talent... IP comes and goes...Quoting: constThey could have just gone to fair competition practices and turning their store into something viable, but laying of people is just so much easier.Bingo.......
As someone who has worked in mega large soulless corporations for over 2 decades........ They will always...... ALWAYS go the easy route........ Even if it blows up and costs them more in the long term....... The board and the CEO will just leave with their golden handshakes and someone else will come in with some other lazy solution to the current mess and the cycle continues.......
For example....... one company I worked for wanted software for a certain application....... Instead of getting the already employed company software engineers to make the software...... They scouted around and found another company that was making software that would fit their needs....... They then bought that company...... Then proceeded to fire everyone from the newly bought company......... AND then found out the software wasnt anywhere near finished and wasnt useable at all........
The CEO left with a multi million dollarydoo golden handshake and a new CEO came in and their solution was just to scrap the entirety of the code we had and go scouting for a third party to make the software........
And the kicker is that they didnt use the companies own software engineers because....... "The company did not see any value in getting them to make the software"........
I use to like reading Dilbert...... But hes now to close to reality to be funny........
Sorry for the off topic rant...... But this kind of stuff really *BEEPS* me off..........
Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, it's like when a company buys another one for their IP... then fires off all the engineers that created said IP. It's dumb as shit. Buy a company for their talent... IP comes and goes...Trademarks and patents should, IMO, have an expiration time if the owner ceases to produce anything from them. In the digital world, it's hard to think of a fair and practical length of time. 20 years? 30? 50 feels ancient for digital content. Less than 20 feels a little unfair to me.
It wouldn't solve companies buying smaller ones for their IP, but it might help a little.
slaapliedje Oct 1, 2023
Quoting: 14Good example of this is Immersion. When was the last time you saw a new joystick that supports force feedback? Apparently there are some niche company that sells their own design of one that is like 3k for just the base unit... No one wants to pay them their fee, so no force feedback for us that used to enjoy such a thing. Ha, watched a video about this last night, an LGR one, and as he pointed out 'much different than the little vibration motors we have in modern controllers.'Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, it's like when a company buys another one for their IP... then fires off all the engineers that created said IP. It's dumb as shit. Buy a company for their talent... IP comes and goes...Trademarks and patents should, IMO, have an expiration time if the owner ceases to produce anything from them. In the digital world, it's hard to think of a fair and practical length of time. 20 years? 30? 50 feels ancient for digital content. Less than 20 feels a little unfair to me.
It wouldn't solve companies buying smaller ones for their IP, but it might help a little.
Quoting: CybolicSorta funny, but you're not claiming they're for profit, are you?Quoting: 14Companies are for-profit, ya know? Go to church if you want more of a family feel. Companies are not your family.I'm afraid I have bad news for you....
Regardless, if you don't like my example, my point still stands. Think of a different example I guess.
Quoting: 14Ahem. "The library".Quoting: CybolicSorta funny, but you're not claiming they're for profit, are you?Quoting: 14Companies are for-profit, ya know? Go to church if you want more of a family feel. Companies are not your family.I'm afraid I have bad news for you....
Regardless, if you don't like my example, my point still stands. Think of a different example I guess.
Quoting: 14Looks to me like these churches have been actively gathering a lot more wealth than they spend. Isn't that what you'd call "making a profit"? Churches are not treated as business entities so obviously we don't apply the for-profit label. Not even to the sort of Christian offshoots that preach the prosperity gospel and exist to enrich their charismatic leaders.Quoting: CybolicSorta funny, but you're not claiming they're for profit, are you?Quoting: 14Companies are for-profit, ya know? Go to church if you want more of a family feel. Companies are not your family.I'm afraid I have bad news for you....
Quoting: 14Regardless, if you don't like my example, my point still stands. Think of a different example I guess.So if the point of the bit Cybolic quoted wasn't that churches are an ethical counterbalance to corporate greed, maybe it was that we can't hold businesses and their leaders to any ethical standard at all? That we should just accept that anything goes in the name of profit?
Any way you spin it, your point wasn't great. In my opinion, obviously.
dziadulewicz Oct 2, 2023
Quoting: tuubiI wouldn't agree with the extremes you described either. Extremes are never good. Without writing something very long winded, I'm trying to say that we can't expect CEO's to love their employees like parent-child or close relative relationships. The other extreme would be complete disregard of human life. Something in between can happen.Quoting: 14Looks to me like these churches have been actively gathering a lot more wealth than they spend. Isn't that what you'd call "making a profit"? Churches are not treated as business entities so obviously we don't apply the for-profit label. Not even to the sort of Christian offshoots that preach the prosperity gospel and exist to enrich their charismatic leaders.Quoting: CybolicSorta funny, but you're not claiming they're for profit, are you?Quoting: 14Companies are for-profit, ya know? Go to church if you want more of a family feel. Companies are not your family.I'm afraid I have bad news for you....
Quoting: 14Regardless, if you don't like my example, my point still stands. Think of a different example I guess.So if the point of the bit Cybolic quoted wasn't that churches are an ethical counterbalance to corporate greed, maybe it was that we can't hold businesses and their leaders to any ethical standard at all? That we should just accept that anything goes in the name of profit?
Any way you spin it, your point wasn't great. In my opinion, obviously.
If Epic was able to avoid their current financial problem, it wouldn't have been out of love, it would have been from smart business decisions with the goal of self sustenance. Most employees would be happy and comfortable knowing their company had a sturdy future.
If you lay off one of your two employees (50% of workforce) from a cookie stand because customers started going to a competitor, are you evil now that you can't afford to pay wages? As the owner of the business, should you take out loans and go into debt to keep your employee count?
I get that there are more reasons people don't like Epic. I'm focusing only on layoff situations.
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