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Seriously? Are you seriously making this argument? Are you seriously comparing running a PC app store vs App Store? One is the most open platform and the other has only one (1, uno, sole, single) app store.
And which one of them are we reading about laying off employees while admitting they are spending more than they are bringing in?
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You see this trap in tech companies as well as game studios. I call it "acting like Google before you're Google". And in fact virtually nobody becomes Google. Google has been a money printing machine for 20+ years almost unparalleled in human history. That's allowed Google to write bespoke software for everything , which has been useful because almost nobody has Google's problems. It's also allowed Google to contribu…
> Then you see the likes of Twitter a decade or more ago who dedicated possibly hundreds of engineers to make Cassandra work. That's doing Google shit. But they aren't Google. And eventually those chickens come home to roost. Isn't it the other way around? Using off-the-shelf solutions like Cassandra didn't work, so they had to resort to doing actual Google shit, a custom solution, to meet their needs.
Often when I see layoffs like this, I can't help but think "Wow that company has so many employees and yet, in practice, does so little". This perhaps a rather uncharitable sentiment, but I can't help but have it. Yes, Unreal Engine keeps getting improved, more Fortnite content gets produced. But there is a general lack of innovation, one that I find personally painful when I look at Epic's recent-ish track record. N…
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I certainly still hold a grudge against tim sweeney for saying piracy made them not release stuff on pc and after a while going back to releasing on pc while whining about valve fees and then launching epic games with similar fees and way worse service for the developers...
> similar fees No? Epic charges 12% (with the first $1m free) vs. Valve’s frankly extortionate (i.e. industry standard) 30%.
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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.
I suspect that they would STILL be in the same boat that they are in. You see a silo where I see a service provider.
Does apple make money on doing what they do.. You bet.
But the lesson here is that they make that money because of scale, and without it replacing payment processing, fraud management, and the customer service you need with it is a HARD problem. Epic needs more than Fortnite to justify running all that on their own or it's going to turn into a black hole: because payment processing for "digital goods" is a nightmare.
I suspect that both apple and googles extension into payments at point of sale, has contractual ties to their App Store payment processing. Something Epic will always lack.
The real pain in the ass here is the incumbent card processors, and their fee structures.
I suspect that the industry is going to need to go back and re-visit micro transactions in the coming years.
I am not Tim Sweeney's biggest fan. I know he and his company have many detractors. Please read this comment with that in mind, because while I don't love them, I also think that as layoff announcements go, this is good. No beating around the bush, explicitly NOT blaming AI, taking responsibility, taking care of those impacted. If you are gonna do it, this is as good as it can get. I think the reality is that Epic go…
> Video games are the exact opposite of Infinite Growth Forever. People get bored and move on.
To me, Epic Games were clearly trying to "pull a Valve" and capture the platform magic that allows Valve and other platforms like Roblox to be sustainably profitable. Obviously they have their own game store, but they also have a Fortnite Creative / UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) platform where people can create minigames inside Fortnite that work similarly to Roblox.
They even had the right idea for a while - refusing in-app transactions in their Fortnite Creative platform to encourage actually fun games rather than greedy games that prey on players. Unfortunately they had to walk back that system recently, which I now assume to be for the same financial reason as this new layoff.
I think their idea didn't work for two reasons. First, they locked down the UEFN platform too hard, leaving not a lot of options for developers to modify core gameplay features like movement and player controller. Devs like me who wanted more control over the player character and game mechanics were really severely restricted - if it was intentional, it was a bad call, and if it was unintentional then it shows that UEFN was too half-baked technically when they launched it. Second, Fortnite already had the reputation of being "just that Battle Royale game", so people didn't innovate too far beyond the game's base gameplay, rather than Roblox which was more like a true game engine / platform where every genre was possible. This kind of doomed their plan to compete head-to-head with Roblox from the start.
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To corporations, "enough" is not even a word. Line must go up and to the right, forever. There is not even the concept of "enough."
Line goes up is also not enough anymore. The slope of line going up is most important. You made 10bn last year, but only 9 bn this year - this means time for some layoffs to please "the market". I have no way to explain this world we live in.
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> Gamers' vehement defense of what is effectively a monopoly continues to confuse me. It is a monopoly but that can be a good thing sometimes. Steam is really good! Is it 30% cut good? Maybe not but I do think Valve has managed to keep Steam good for a very long time and if they lose their monopoly they're going to have a strong incentive to fuck things up. Another example is WhatsApp. Sure, sucks for Google and Appl…
Why would Apple care if WhatsApp has a monopoly? They don’t make money from iMessage
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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…
In my experience, the Epic Games Store downloads faster, installs more efficiently, and launches games faster than Steam. The social features I actually use (i.e., add a friend, join them in a game) work fine. I'm not aware of any features Steam has that EGS lacks that I actually use frequently (Valve's VR, streaming tech, and Proton are great, but I don't use those frequently). It's not just me, many indie game deve…
User reviews, guides, discussions, workshop and shared screenshots and videos: bold social features that are an incredible source of agony for mediocre and bad indie games.
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Kids who play video games grow up, and get off Fortnite, and you have to convince the next generation to sign up. And anyways, the population who plays these kind of live service shooters is relatively constant imo, and there are new games on the block nowadays. Actually what's an anomaly is how long Fortnite continued to be popular.
I don’t think this is necessarily what is happening. Roblox predates Fortnite by a decade and is only getting more popular over time
This is exactly what happened with my niece, my nephew, and all of their friends.
Which isn't to say they've outgrown all of the games they played when they were younger. They still play minecraft, stardew valley, kirby, mario, etc. I don't know why, but they all bounced off of Fortnite after they hit a certain age. I wonder why.