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Epic Games is laying off 16% of its staff

bloomberg.com

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

#121

Post by politelemon »

jzb wrote: post #95

From the announcement: "The company also announced that it’s divesting Bandcamp, an online audio distribution platform it acquired last year" I don't care a ton about Epic, but I love Bandcamp. It's my primary mechanism these days for discovering and acquiring music. I was puzzled when Epic bought Bandcamp, apparently they were too. They're being kicked over to Songtradr -- I hope that's a neutral to good move, but I…

I can't see it as a good thing at all. They're effectively being thrown about to yet another operating model which will have a disruptive impact on them.

The new company Songtradr focuses on licensing, it's a b2b, while Bandcamp is a b2c. So it can be easy to see how they'd want to make Bandcamp more like themselves. Of course I'm being negative and cynical, apologies. I share the same fondness for Bandcamp.

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

#122

Post by JAlexoid »

n4r9 wrote: post #36
eigenvalue wrote: post #26

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…

The first two paras I agree sound fairly likely. Regarding the second para, the interesting part for me is: how do these companies determine which are the unproductive devs? My impression so far is that senior management has no way of measuring this, given how little data is provided to back up decisions to RTO. Not so sure about the third para. Why would one company be more ahead of the game than any other, if indee…

Sorry, but mass layoffs aren't exactly the most rational ones.

There's a lot of "you have to cut X off your salary budget", pick whoever you want. Then it's up to the managers to pick, very subjectively, who they want to work with the most.

FFS - I managed to dodge 4 layoffs at a startup, including my whole department being cut wholesale. My managers always kept me, even though I wouldn't call myself the "best" or "the cheapest". All of it just boils down to one thing - I'm the one that whoever manages me can rely on. Just that... being reliable.

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

#123

Post by torginus »

mpereira wrote: post #33

Unity also had 3 recent mass layoffs. I compiled their headcount since 2004 here: https://www.contextualize.ai/mpereira/the-growth-of-unity-in...

Great chart! But it's so weird to see companies go on a hiring spree AFTER their product was essentially done. I cannot name a single feature that I use that wasn't present in the 2020 version. Since then, their headcount has more than quadrupled. What are those people doing?

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

#124

Post by lesuorac »

giantg2 wrote: post #31
jsnell wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, those kinds of one-off events don't cause an otherwise profitable company to lay off people.

Sure it can. If the executives want to hit their performance bonuses they might start axing lower revenue projects or support groups. In a higher rate environment, it's certainly possible that the decision is made to lay people off to reduce the higher cost debt that needs to be incurred or the time it will take to pay it off, even if the company is otherwise profitable.not saying that's the case here though. Of cour…

IIUC, Epic Games is private so they only need to convince Tim not to ax their bonuses and not the wider stock market.

Although I mean if you're the executive overseeing the devision where users got overcharged perhaps your bonus did deserve to be ax'd.

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

#125

Post by CursedUrn »

andersa wrote: post #25
lfkdev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite is still a massive cash cow, but man they burn actual billions for the Epic Store which still isn't very epic and is missing most basic features.

It's actually mind blowing how much money they spend on user acquisition while the thing is still full of bugs! Why does it take ages to open? Why did downloading some games launch another launcher that downloaded the game again? Why did it sometimes not switch to idle when in the background and keep wasting CPU? Why does the UI sometimes just randomly not work? Why is every interaction with it so slow ? Why does it…

It is shockingly slow. If you go to the store tab it freezes up for 20+ seconds, just to show a few small jpegs and some text. It's baffling to see such poor performance from a games company that's used to accomplishing more complicated tasks in less than a 60th of a second.

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

#126

Post by HDThoreaun »

bpiche wrote: post #40
voisin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Sweeney would like us all to agree that it is Apple’s fault for their App Store policies.

And he'd blame Valve, too. EGS might be great for devs, but it's not good for users. It's not a big conspiracy against him. People just don't want to use the store! Whining in the face of obvious failure makes you look like a real loser.

Epic games store has been pretty good for me

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

#127

Post by [deleted] »

politelemon wrote: post #121
jzb wrote: post #95

From the announcement: "The company also announced that it’s divesting Bandcamp, an online audio distribution platform it acquired last year" I don't care a ton about Epic, but I love Bandcamp. It's my primary mechanism these days for discovering and acquiring music. I was puzzled when Epic bought Bandcamp, apparently they were too. They're being kicked over to Songtradr -- I hope that's a neutral to good move, but I…

I can't see it as a good thing at all. They're effectively being thrown about to yet another operating model which will have a disruptive impact on them. The new company Songtradr focuses on licensing, it's a b2b, while Bandcamp is a b2c. So it can be easy to see how they'd want to make Bandcamp more like themselves. Of course I'm being negative and cynical, apologies. I share the same fondness for Bandcamp.

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by Springtime »

politelemon wrote: post #121
jzb wrote: post #95

From the announcement: "The company also announced that it’s divesting Bandcamp, an online audio distribution platform it acquired last year" I don't care a ton about Epic, but I love Bandcamp. It's my primary mechanism these days for discovering and acquiring music. I was puzzled when Epic bought Bandcamp, apparently they were too. They're being kicked over to Songtradr -- I hope that's a neutral to good move, but I…

I can't see it as a good thing at all. They're effectively being thrown about to yet another operating model which will have a disruptive impact on them. The new company Songtradr focuses on licensing, it's a b2b, while Bandcamp is a b2c. So it can be easy to see how they'd want to make Bandcamp more like themselves. Of course I'm being negative and cynical, apologies. I share the same fondness for Bandcamp.

Looking at their Wikipedia they also apparently bought 7digital, another online music store, earlier this year. Had no idea about this until now.

Edit: to clarify meant Songtradr.

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

#129

Post by n4r9 »

paxys wrote: post #41
n4r9 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two paras I agree sound fairly likely. Regarding the second para, the interesting part for me is: how do these companies determine which are the unproductive devs? My impression so far is that senior management has no way of measuring this, given how little data is provided to back up decisions to RTO. Not so sure about the third para. Why would one company be more ahead of the game than any other, if indee…

It's not possible to measure with 100% accuracy, but let's not kid ourselves every company and every division can easily pick out the bottom 10-15% of devs who have close to zero real impact. The actual number in fact is likely far greater than that.

This feels like an appeal to intuition. I have no doubt that senior management believes they can do this accurately, but I'm not sure why I ought to agree.

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

#130

Post by JAlexoid »

izacus wrote: post #80
paxys wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you mean "no operational impact"? How did you measure that? People on this site are constantly complaining how horrible the Google services became.

Over the last 3+X years, not suddenly after 1-2 years of layoffs.

I can bet that if you bring Google Reader up, you'll get a lot more complaining - than any "horrible Google services" topic.

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