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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

#371
post #322
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Look at Facebook/Meta. They use MySQL (plus some other stuff on top). Twitter was at the peak of being trendy and trying to make NoSQL work. It was quite literally an idoelogical vanity project.

Facebook invented Cassandra, so I don't get your point. And Twitter wasn't exactly a WordPress site doing a needless vanity migration.

I don't think "use MySQL" really means the same thing at that scale.

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

#372

> "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…

The store is quite a cost. They also have a billion engineers working in every different direction contributing to UE.

if UE doesn't pay for itself they should just turn off the lights and sit in shame forever

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

#373

> "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?!?

It's me. I have accumulated several dozen free games over the years through the Epic Store. Sorry Tim Sweeney!

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

#375
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because games is simply not a particularly profitable industry. There's a reason why Valve moved on from making games to being a digital landlord.

I'm gonna need someone smarter than me to show me the numbers on that. Fornite by itself is insanely profitable.

https://www.matthewball.co/all/presentation-the-state-of-vid...

You need an email address to access it but it’s good, if bleak, reading.

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could at the very least just package it up to run with Wine, but Sweeney is stubbornly set in his linux hating ways. I could use their store through the Heroic launcher, as I do with GoG, but I won't because fuck you Tim.

If we're being realistic from a business standpoint: Linux is at best, 3% market share. A very passionate 3%, but 3%. Using resources to support such a niche sector is a hard sell.

This argument would be a great one in 2016.

Now though, proton/wine works more or less for everything, and the storefront is a web based one anyway.

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

#377
post #79

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…

Why the good god do so many people care if business is effcient. If businesses were maximally efficient we'd all be starving to death or working at red line hanging on by a thread with no slack at a job to avoid staving to death, while like 5000 people live like gods.

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

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anoth…

> People hated steam when it launched but you needed it to play CS 1.6.

I thought CSS was the first release on steam beta? I remember playing the crap out of it, then the actual steam release happened, and it somehow turned into a laggy buggy hunk of crap for months.

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

#380
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're being realistic from a business standpoint: Linux is at best, 3% market share. A very passionate 3%, but 3%. Using resources to support such a niche sector is a hard sell.

This argument would be a great one in 2016. Now though, proton/wine works more or less for everything, and the storefront is a web based one anyway.

I'd hope this community of all places would understand that "just integrate X with Y" is never as simple as "just". It's still something a team needs to do, and the gain is minimal unless Epic is also going to try and make their own console-esque device. That's the incentive for Steam.
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