Submitted 2 weeks ago by Agent_Karyo@piefed.world to games@lemmy.world
While the scope of layoffs has stunned employees, industry analysts have told IGN that cost-reduction within Epic Games was inevitable amid growing external pressures and costly industry battles.
Working people paying for the mistakes of the ownership class. What else is new?
I just don’t understand. Their engine powers the vast majority of AAA games, and a huge chunk of non-AAA. I know they charge for this engine. How the hell are they strapped for cash. And before you comment, I know the answer unfortunately.
They had fortnight. A competent executive team would see that as a fluke that is great, but not dependable long term, and plan for investing that money back into the business but always prepared for the popularity of Fortnight could dip, but it wouldn’t matter because the core of their business would carry it.
Instead, it sounds like they had a standard executive team, where they thought the money from fortnight would last forever, it would never die, and line would only ever go up. They stupidly made a bunch of wrong decisions, and are now all shocked pikachu that Fortnight’s popularity is waning after almost a decade. So of course it’s the workers who should be fired now, not the executives, no of course not.
They did have the wisdom to use Fortnite’s proceeds to make something like a Steam competitor that both takes a lot of startup capital and also has the potential to wildly exceed Fortnite’s future review, but they did not have the wisdom to make a store that customers would actually want to use for any reason except giveaways.
I’m still not over the statement that consumers shouldn’t need to know whether AI assets are in a game or not, and Epic won’t be doing that even if Steam does. Couldn’t help but get in their own way every step
How they managed to spend billions on a store/launcher, without bothering to make it a good experience is kinda of impressive.
I think you’re overthinking this. Line go up =maybe next year ee can afford your bonus. Line go down = layoffs. This is exactly how every company works, this isnt a new thing.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again:
Epic’s corporate overlords don’t have an original thought rattling around in their collective heads. Their entire business model is to flail around, copy anything that seems remotely successful with a reskin, and hope it sticks.
All that aside, I got to play test early forms of fortnite. It’s original inception was sort of like a plants vs zombies game, but with building. When PUBG blew up in popularity, EPIC completely threw out the original design of fortnite and reworked it into a battle royale game to jump on the PUBG hype train to make lots of moolah. Nothing about fortnite was original, and lots of the content that was added are just copies of games that were already amazing, (nod to guitar hero and rock band,) or reskins of fortnight assets into other things that are popular.
It’s felt like fortnight has been keeping epic alive for nearly a decade. 10 - 15 year olds that were playing fortnight and buying with mom and dad’s $ are grown up; AAAANNNNNNDDDD they don’t have disposable income. 20-24 year olds are experiencing 7.7% unemployment, if they have a college degree. Those numbers get worse the less education young people have. Avg unemployment is about 4.5% vs for highschool kids and kids working through college the unemployment rate is 13%. Epic’s entire profit model depends on a never ending supply of children with access to infinite disposable income.
So if Epic wants to do well financially it’s going to have to:
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
You forgot one more thing, they still have not changed their model. Instead of investing some of that money into attempting to create new good games, they only seem interested in buying other games that they feel will make them money. Instead of doing the work, they would rather just buy up properties that look promosing. Here’s looking at you Fall Guys.
They bought Rocket League and pulled it from the Steam store to make it a retroactive exclusive, then acted confused as to why players were upset.
That original version still exists - it’s called Save the World and iirc they recently revamped it and made it free for everyone (it used to be a standalone purchase).
Last time I played it I didn’t find it all that engaging, so it’s hardly surprising they stuck with BR as the lead mode once it took off. But my point is they didn’t ‘throw out’ StW, it just got eclipsed by a far more popular mode. Can’t really blame them for backing a winner.
it’s called Save the World and iirc they recently revamped it and made it free for everyone (it used to be a standalone purchase).
Oh wow, I might give it another shot…
Oh wait, it’s on epic store, fuck knows if it has linux support, definitely has spyware, if I didn’t interface with it before I sure as fuck won’t interface with it now.
i really liked stw until they said no more content updates and stopped developing the story :(
I checked out of Fortnite when the brand partnerships started. I really liked the first few seasons though…
It felt like the game had a strong identity that was challenging PUBG’s nonsense. No complicated inventory, just 5 slots. 1 or 2 weapons per category with very well defined playstyles, no incomprehensibly complicated weapon mod system on top. Building is very cool and raises the skill ceiling so high too !
And the style was cartoony and silly : you don’t get cars, you get shopping carts ! Characters have no voices, the “laugh” is a donkey sound !
But when the brand deals started coming, they started wilfully throwing away their identity to replace it with recognizable IP. So I quit.
I used to play it quite a bit in beta and early release, and then checked back in in 2021 when they had already done a lot of brand partnerships. You’re right on the dot. They completely removed the game’s identity. I found it funny you mention the golf carts, because when I played it, the first match my team of randoms landed next to some cars (from rocket league I think) and just spent the entire game doing stunts to earn points. There was zero interaction with the core gameplay loop. It was crazy.
How much longer can you keep a dead horse alive?
Did they ever make the actual gunplay not garbage?
Because the aiming mechanics were utter dogshit, I can’t imagine playing that game seriously.
Now it makes sense why Epic raised the prices for Fortnite Vbucks. I thought its greed, but looks like Epic is in trouble.
Good. Let them burn and maybe Timmy Tencent will finally shut the fuck up
Is it finally happening?
They still giving away free games?
Yep. New set every Thursday
anon232@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
We need to go back to the days where video games come to an end. All this live service forever game bullshit is a cancer for the industry, and just incentivizes overt monetization
terabyterex@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
i hate this statement, there are currently 543,275,322,871 games. i think fortnite is the only live service game i plau. (recent games i played )
alan wake 2
baldurs gate 3
cyberpunk
doom dark ages
(i am not going to go on and on, but thosenwere some very popular games.)
ampy@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
Uhhh… What?
FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Ironically live service games are the only ones guaranteed to end.
Most other games can be played just fine long after the majority of players have moved on.