Tim Sweeney is a good person, good for him
I can confirm. We wrote couple of games together in 1995-98 (Fire Fight being the biggest). He is genuinely a good guy.
Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
21–30 of 306 posts
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#22[deleted]
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#23What does HN people think on the whole idea of stealing concept from PUBG? I am kind of divided on this topic.
I'd argue it's a similar case as when businesses create competing product offerings with better execution and end up winning in the long term.
Staying on the gaming topic, you could say Call of Duty is a copy of Counter Strike? I'm not sure which came first but the idea still stands.
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#24Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#25> ...has popularized the battle royale category — think Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games — almost single-handedly... Almost single-handedly? This is a bizarre claim and it's like rewriting history.
Besides PUBG, who else has done this in a successful way? Fortnite wasn’t the original but it blows the success of PUBG out of the water at this point. I’m okay with “PUBG + Fortnite” ~= “almost single handedly”.
I think the key word in that quote is popularized — even if earlier games did it, these are the two to demonstrate widespread appeal.
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#26> ...has popularized the battle royale category — think Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games — almost single-handedly... Almost single-handedly? This is a bizarre claim and it's like rewriting history.
This can be debated. Although Rust/H1Z1/PUBG were certainly popular battle royale games before Fortnite, Fortnite was the only one that brought it mainstream , outside the hardcore gamer ecosystem.
Battle royal was already popular enough for Epic to drop everything they had and shift focus to the genere without any doubt that it was the correct thing to do. To give them credit for the popularity of the genre is to rewrite history.
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#27What does HN people think on the whole idea of stealing concept from PUBG? I am kind of divided on this topic.
Was PUBG the first? Didn't they arguably steal the idea from a movie? And isn't the concept of last man standing like as old as dirt? Not exactly the same but I played assassin in the early 80s and it wasn't a new concept then.
Arguably I feel like the idea is too simple to deserve any kind of protection. It would be like protecting "hide and seek" or "tag"
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#28> ...has popularized the battle royale category — think Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games — almost single-handedly... Almost single-handedly? This is a bizarre claim and it's like rewriting history.
This can be debated. Although Rust/H1Z1/PUBG were certainly popular battle royale games before Fortnite, Fortnite was the only one that brought it mainstream , outside the hardcore gamer ecosystem.
I disagree. PUBG was _insanely_ popular well before fortnite showed up.
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#29What does HN people think on the whole idea of stealing concept from PUBG? I am kind of divided on this topic.
Concepts can't be stolen. The gameplay is so significantly different, it's hard to say what we're arguing what's stolen that PUBG didn't "steal" themselves.
Re: Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018
#30$3B profit doesn’t really seem consistent with $15B valuation. Tech companies these days seem valued at 20x revenue or more. Why would they bother raising $1.25B at that price?
I suppose Fortnite is a fad, so there is a pessimistic case to be made to cash in as much as possible.