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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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be the most succinct description of where we're at right now, that I've read all year.

Kind of - but it ignores the fact that the tightening was to fight inflation due to insane amounts of government spending. And the government just upped the ante and is spending more. Right now the national debt is growing faster than the economy. Expect everything to get a lot worse.

We've had massive government spending for >20 years now. When looking for explanations for new conditions, look for what has changed, not what hasn't changed.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sunk cost. Question is going-forward risk and return potential." Basically the only way people evaluate you is pn past performance. If you made a bad judgement call resulting in these sorts of penalties, you're likely out. "For senior management?" For executives.

> if you made a bad judgement call resulting in these sorts of penalties, you're likely out If you’re likely to make them again and/or don’t bring enough counterbalancing value to the table. If it came out of thin air it’s performative to punish. There’s a good Lee Iacocca quote about this somewhere. > For executives Senior management and executives are the same thing in a general context. (Another is upper managemen…

"If it came out of thin air it’s performative to punish."

Nothing comes out of thin air, unless you're saying the fines are bull shit.

"Senior management and executives are the same thing in a general context."

Depends on how big the company is. At my company senior management is at least a level below the executive level.

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

#253
post #88

Epic has done a poor job activating its storefront. Steam is ready for a competitor that can pull in AAA titles, but there really is no reason to use Epic if a game is also on Steam - Steam is far and away the better app.

I'd argue antitrust should step in and make sure Steam doesn't offer exclusivity agreements or punish studios who utilize more than one distribution.

Steam is the big player with network effects, and anything more than "being better" by steam should be construed as anticompetitive.

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

#254

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…

Gaming is a notoriously boom/bust field. Layoffs, failures and bankruptcies happen even in the best of times. Reading anything macro into a game developer layoff is really stretching things.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's over?

Myself and several of my friends have gotten offers in the last month or so. Also recruiter spam has picked up pretty heavily. I’ve also read in a few places that hiring is picking up.

In my network

Lucidchart just had a layoff this week.

And Qualtrics is rumored to have one soon.

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

#256

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…

Layoffs are rarely about productivity, especially at super profitable companies. Layoffs are primarily about short-term metrics to drive shareholder expectations. Where those metrics reflect productivity it is generally three or four degrees of separation from any actual productivity data. The thing those metrics are most good at showing are labor cost aggregates versus industry base rates.

The biggest reason for layoffs has always been, and likely will always be, the "C-Suite class" controlling expectations on labor costs (salaries/wages) in an industry. That's why they often happen in waves, many companies at once, it's a pressure release valve to keep the labor market in "control" propagated by the largest shareholders, especially those born and bred into the C-Suites. Those shareholders don't actually care how productive a company is, productivity is increasingly orthogonal to profit. They care how profitable a company is, and companies stay the most profitable when (among other things) the labor market is most effectively depressed (and layoffs are a useful depression tactic) and laborers aren't comfortable enough to fight for better wages.

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

#257
post #54

Fingers crossed they kill the Games Store.

So that we can go back to the Steam monopoly?

I don't think Steam requires or even pays for platform-exclusive games. If your game doesn't need Steam-specific features, you can sell it on Steam and anywhere else you like. Even the DRM is entirely optional.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of - but it ignores the fact that the tightening was to fight inflation due to insane amounts of government spending. And the government just upped the ante and is spending more. Right now the national debt is growing faster than the economy. Expect everything to get a lot worse.

We've had massive government spending for >20 years now. When looking for explanations for new conditions, look for what has changed, not what hasn't changed.

"I'm not obese because I've been over eating. I've always over eaten" The printing isn't new and neither are the recessions. They're just making them worse.

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

#259
post #131

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…

If ChatGPT should be able to generate any code, a function that outputs a set of prime numbers longs in Kotlin should be simple enough (unless you consider Kotlin, the 12th-20th most popular language according to various surveys, too obscure). One that has a good big-O runtime that is compact as possible. After a bit of futzing I get this: fun sieve(n: Long) = (2L until n).fold((2L until n).toMutableList()){p,i->p.ap…

Microsoft breaking Outlook and Teams does more for productivity than all the AI in the world combined until now.

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

#260
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show evidence of him "blaming" Valve? I'm not aware of that. And it appears as though you are criticizing his character based on a behavior he didn't do. Off the top of my head I can think of him saying the Valve Steamdeck is great: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/141575567884990054... And him saying that Valve not demanding crossplay is bad.

Yes, this. I was going to reply with the same thing but thought it wasn't worth. There is a lot of hate towards Epic due to EGS, which I get - but Tim has never said anything about losing income due to other stores existing. Sure he's said a lot of bad things about Apple, but never about Valve. He's actually a really good guy, all the hate towards him really irks me - fine, hate the epic game store, I don't personall…

I used to play Rocket League on linux through steam. Epic killed that. They are very bad for linux gaming and I avoid anything Epic like the plague.
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