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Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

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Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#111
post #76

Fingers crossed they kill the Games Store.

So people complain about single stores on mobile devices, and then they wish for a single one in PC games, what an irony.

Multiple stores is great but I wished there was only one launcher. I must have seven installed currently on my gaming PC, each needing updating every week.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#112
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that we can go back to the Steam monopoly?

If another company wants to make a Steam competitor on PC, go for it. EGS isn't a competitor, it's an internet scam.

How is it a scam?

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#113
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of big shops are choking under bureaucracy and process right now, which is the sort of things LLMs are good at.

It's the opposite. LLMs are good after you make your way through the bureaucracy and end up with well defined specs and a ton of boilerplate code & tests to churn out. I'd say most devs are spending 90%+ of their time on the former.

Idk, ChatGPT has been great boost to my efficiency filling out all those "5 min" pre-review alignment standup meeting intake documents. Now it really DOES just take 5 mins!

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal experience but most of the people I've seen being fired in one of the big ones are senior people working in customer facing roles, where the expectation is that they will be replaced by AI and wishful thinking. Newly hired people were more junior and cheaper than previous employees so it makes no sense to fire them.

> most of the people I've seen being fired in one of the big ones are senior people working in customer facing roles Which industry? I’m seeing a lot of middle layers being reduced, but not the rainmakers.

Until hiring decisions are subjective and prone to manipulation - the "rainmakers" will not be fired. Middle management is screwed, though.

Though functions like CEO and a lot of the executive suite - are under threat of just being replaced.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#115
post #60

Why are people still reading tech layoff news and trying to attribute it to specific problems at a company? Remember that Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Shopify etc. laid off large chunks of their workforce while collectively making hundreds of billions of dollars in profit. Companies lay off people because they can, simple as that.

There might be similar external factors but "because they can" seems like incomplete analysis at best.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#116
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that we can go back to the Steam monopoly?

If another company wants to make a Steam competitor on PC, go for it. EGS isn't a competitor, it's an internet scam.

Those are strong words, do you mind expanding a bit? I personally get my games from whatever store has the best deal, which means my library is split between Steam, Gog and Epic. I don't feel that one is better than the other, they all seem equally meh to me.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#117

Is this my fault because of all the free games I claimed?

Expect to be charged for their full price retroactively :)

You joke, but I could see Epic one day being like "if your EGS account only has free purchases and you've never actually paid for anything, your account/games will be removed in 30 days."

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#118

This is probably just continued post-COVID demand normalization. Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. But in many cases companies planned like it was totally sustainable and would continue. That’s why even super profitable companies like Microsoft and Epic are doing layoffs in 2023. The other reason of course is that they went a bit cr…

https://steamdb.info/app/753/charts/

There is still some insane growth

Fortnite's game as a service fatigue, for some reason they didn't jump on the Extraction Shooter hype and it cost them today IMO, Fortnite became successful because they jumped on a trend at the right time (from Survival Base Building to Battle Royal), they seem to have forgotten that

EPIC launcher is still bad today.. which doesn't make me want to have it open, and let alone to browse it.. which might hurt their numbers

Steam's launcher follows the same path it seems, slow and bloated CEF bullshit.. makes me want to use it less

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#119
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote coming up, but when Google laid off a bunch of people those that I know that worked there said the most critical people on their teams were the ones let go.

And yet there has been no operational impact at Google since the layoffs...so maybe they weren't so critical after all?

I mean people can be critical without being load bearing.

If you decide to stop paying your water bill you don't lose service that same day. Typically these layoffs either cause or are a sign of stagnation and then some scrappy startup starts eating away at your market share.

Re: Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

#120

This is probably just continued post-COVID demand normalization. Basically all software and gaming got a massive bump that was obviously going to have an unsustainable component to it. But in many cases companies planned like it was totally sustainable and would continue. That’s why even super profitable companies like Microsoft and Epic are doing layoffs in 2023. The other reason of course is that they went a bit cr…

Anecdotally, GitHub Co Pilot is barely a 5% performance boost. Still useful, but I think a nice coffee machine does more.

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