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Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

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Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#301

Post by keyringlight »

surgical_fire wrote: post #271
keyringlight wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help thinking the battle was lost before it even started, no matter how good the offering was because the PC and mobile platforms (where epic operate their store) have 99.9% already decided who owns them. The way I see it Epic wanted to copy what Counter-strike and HL2 was to Steam, but using Fortnite to push their store for a fresh generation of gamers. The problem is they couldn't replace or exist alongside…

They could totally carve their niche if they focused in making their store better. Could it surpass Steam? Probably not. But you don't need to surpass Steam to have a viable, profitable store. GoG is the alternative that proves the rule - it is smaller, but they have their niche offering. EGS is shit, and relied on exclusives (which everyone typically hates, especially on PC).

IIRC GoG has a pretty poor history in actually turning a profit with the exception of when CD Projekt release on of their own games, and even then they do the vast majority of their business on steam or the console stores. If GoG was a decent money-spinner then CP projekt wouldn't have split if off. Even a niche has a cost to operate, and that's with GoG being a pretty plain service on top of game downloads.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#302

Post by troosevelt »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #297
yoyohello13 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just make it a nice experience. Haven’t you been paying attention? That’s not how we do things in business anymore…

Steam does. That's why they're the undefeated king. This applies to everything. If you see a product category where users are legitimately unhappy; then enter it, build something actually good, you'll be the biggest and richest in no-time.

Steam has a lot of issues but there are too just lots of areas where better products don't win out over inferior products, that's just not how the world works for lots of reasons.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#303

Post by someperson »

HerbManic wrote: post #213
recursivecaveat wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think big media companies are just structurally unable to stop trying to double their revenue. They just keep pushing out more products and over-extend at the same time everyone is losing interest in them. That's how you end up with say the MCU producing at quadruple the old pace and the movies making less than ever. At some point there's just nowhere to go.

Epic is funny like that. They arent a publicly traded company and yet they act like one.

Epic is 40% owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which is publicly traded.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#305

Post by hapticmonkey »

pbrum wrote: post #211

Not long ago I was looking at my favorite games of decades past. Unreal Tournament figured very prominently, made of course by Epic. So I wondered: why did they stop making Unreal games? I looked at their game chronology. On one hand, they made Gears of War, an Xbox exclusive that never interested me. And the other one? Oh, right: Fortnite. That's where Unreal Tournament went. They made tons of money for sure. But no…

They had Unreal Tournament 4 in development around 2018 but it never gained much traction in the pre-alpha phase. Once Fortnite blew up they seemed to just focus on that and their app store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3botRkqnwk

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#306

Post by hamdingers »

lux-lux-lux wrote: post #272
hamdingers wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they win with exclusives? The strategy is nonsense. For Sony, I get it. I want to play Demon Souls, I buy a PS5, now I own a PS5 I'm gonna buy more games for it. But for EGS this doesn't make sense. It costs me nothing to install both stores on my PC. I buy Alan Wake 2 on EGS, great, that doesn't make me any more likely to buy the next game I want there. Nothing about the platform is sticky or requires a sunk…

This is definitely wrong, Steam’s stickiness is a massive selling point.

What part? Finish your thought.

Steam is sticky (social features, network effects, etc) and EGS is not, so EGS exclusives do not work. What part of this is "definitely wrong"?

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#307

Post by ericd »

Ethee wrote: post #130
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't losing money on Fortnite, they're losing money on vanity projects like the Epic Game Store where they spend tens of millions of dollars for exclusivity deals with developers, and give away free games to try to poach Steam users with an otherwise inferior product. Unfortunately it is their employees that are paying the price of leadership making it rain with their overflowing coffers they couldn't help but…

It's still funny to me that they would rather burn 9 figures in cash on these silly deals to try and 'trap' gamers on their platform instead of just... I don't know... making a better platform? The reason nobody competes with Steam is simply the sheer number of integration and platform features that make it easy to buy, play and share games with my friends. It's not that hard, stop trying to 'force' me to use your pl…

I think you’re massively underestimating the network effects in play. Steam has an enormous moat.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#308

Post by Reason077 »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #87

> "We're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded," he said. Sorry, HOW?!? How can a company like Epic games with one of the most successful gaming products of the last few decades be losing money with a product that is so mature? Almost every other games developer would love to be in their position on Fortnite but they've somehow turned that into a loss…

> ”Sorry, HOW?!? How can a company like Epic games … be losing money with a product that is so mature?”

I’ve been playing Fortnite a bit lately, after my nieces got me into it.

One thing is that although the player counts are high (always hundreds of thousands of players online, just in the main Battle Royale game), the average revenue per player can’t be that high.

For one thing, once you’ve bought the $10 battle pass once, you only need to average maybe 1 or 2 games per day to earn enough vbucks to buy the next season’s battle pass with vbucks. So if you stay active you can pay once then play the game free forever and still get access to a huge amount of free cosmetics. And much of the player base is kids who are just begging their parents/uncles to buy them stuff in the game rather than spend money themselves because they don’t have credit cards to link to their Epic accounts.

Compare this to something like Hearthstone which is similarly mature. They have a similar battle pass but there’s also a strong incentive to pay real $ for extra card packs and cosmetics. And there are clearly plenty of adult whales buying this stuff. For example, there’s a new mythic Deathwing skin on a gacha wheel that costs, on average, about $200 (!!) to get. It’s only been out a few days and I’ve run into multiple players who have it.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#309

Post by jrozner »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #297
yoyohello13 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just make it a nice experience. Haven’t you been paying attention? That’s not how we do things in business anymore…

Steam does. That's why they're the undefeated king. This applies to everything. If you see a product category where users are legitimately unhappy; then enter it, build something actually good, you'll be the biggest and richest in no-time.

People hated steam when it launched but you needed it to play CS 1.6. It made installing mods easier. Then HL2 released, orange box, and they were able to get a critical mass as they provided platforms support for other games. Steam got better. It’s still not great but they have so much market share that basically any PC gamer already has it. Epic wants some of that money. The problem is nobody wants to install another store and they aren’t doing anything to improve gamer’s experience other than giving away games and having some exclusives. They’ll never hit the critical mass needed that way.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#310

Post by slumberlust »

zer00eyz wrote: post #166
Ethee wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still funny to me that they would rather burn 9 figures in cash on these silly deals to try and 'trap' gamers on their platform instead of just... I don't know... making a better platform? The reason nobody competes with Steam is simply the sheer number of integration and platform features that make it easy to buy, play and share games with my friends. It's not that hard, stop trying to 'force' me to use your pl…

The irony here should be lost on no one. The the lawsuit with apple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple The massive set of fines... https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/... > Just make it a nice experience. That might get in the way of greed and hubris.

I think sweeny is an awful person overall. The lawsuit against apple and google is a net positive for consumers though. Having someone as big as Epic stand up to these digital silos is a good thing.
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