Epic Games laying off 16% of staff, divesting from assets including Bandcamp, and generally hemorrhaging money
That feeling when you race to the bottom only to eventually... arrive at the bottom.
The heck is going on, youd think theyd be making bank now with Unity driving out so many developers.
I'd venture a wild guess that the revenue split business model behind Unreal Engine, and the strategy around spending tons of money to bring people over to the Epic Games Store, are not sustainable. They probably have been generally subsidized by the huge amount of cash that Fortnite has brought in.
Maybe the Fortnite well has dried up? 2023 has been a strong year for news game releases, and it's possible that Fortnite has lost some of players' attention?
Hard to say, but it's looking like Unity are not the only ones struggling to keep their business afloat.
I only have played Fortnite because my nephew was big into it for a long time, now that he and his friends are in high school they have quit playing, I don't know if that's a big trend, but he tells me it is just not cool to play anymore.
They keep giving away free games each week (they have to pay to the publishers of the games to give away games) yet nobody spend money in the store (I think the average was each user spend like $10 or $15 per year)
They also keep buying exclusives, a thing that cost money...
And we cannot forget all the studios and company they have bought, the purchase cost money and their maintenance too
Then I can soon buy music on bandcamp again?
Since they bought bandcamp payments have been fucked. Ever since every time someone buys an album it takes 2 or 3 days to reach me. Which is terrible on band camp friday, where all funds go to the artist. Because of the delay instead of getting the entire sale, I get the regular amount. Logins have been breaking, the app has been unstable, and a bunch of smaller issues. They fucked it up.
Do you know an other app like bandcamp?
There's not really much else around that has the options that bandcamp offers. Short of making and maintaining my own personal site.
Here is an article on it: https://www.polygon.com/23894267/epic-games-fortnite-unreal-engine-layoffs-2023
Looks like they just were spending too much and needed to clean up. On the positive side, they're offering all affected employees 6 months of severance + healthcare. That is really generous of them.