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

reuters.com

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

#381

Post by Morromist »

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 like having a huge library of games on epic-store but when I try to buy a game there - because they're having a sale - its a pain to find games. Steam's search isn't top-notch either, but its 1000x better than epic's.

For example. I search for "roguelike" and it brings up 1 single game (which is coming soon). There are few tags on games. No way to refine a search. In fact they have a category called "rogue-like" which has a lot of games, but somehow the search just misses them. There's no way to refine results by popularity or most sales.

I suspect this is all an intentional design philosophy of epic, a way to have a lot more control over what the user sees than steam, because its so bad it doesn't make any other sense.

Also for some reason their store takes a LOT longer to load than steam. The game library UI is much worse. Pretty sure there's no easy way to mod games through the epic store or see dev updates or talk on a forum or submit bugs. Just so bad.

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

#382

Post by joe_mamba »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #223
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…

It's truly incredible how difficult business people make doing business. Doing business is very simple, easy, and straightforward, but I suspect in a lot of cases the individual behavioral aspects of the executives get in the way of doing good business. Direction and leadership is something that these companies never seem to get right.

>It's truly incredible how difficult business people make doing business.

And they're the ones making the most money and avoiding the layoffs.

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

#383

Post by johnnyanmac »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #324
lux-lux-lux wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> similar fees No? Epic charges 12% (with the first $1m free) vs. Valve’s frankly extortionate (i.e. industry standard) 30%.

As I understand it, epic charges less but also offers less services that a developer can need like the gamehub and steam's 30% i think is tiered and reduces with sales volume? I'm not sure, though, don't take my word for it.

1. Those features aren't a la carte, so the share matters if you're not utilizing those extra services. You're basically paying for the audience.

2. Valve does have tiered shares, but it's based on publisher sales. And it's extremely high. I have to check again, but I believe the threshold was 25m yearly revenue for 25% and 50m for 20%.

Innsome ways it's more frustrating. It's basically a tax cut for the rich.

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

#384

Post by usrusr »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #337
uyzstvqs wrote: post #297

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.

Steam was first to market and it took forever for competitors to form. It being a good service is secondary.

If Valve started to routinely do Bad Things on Steam they'd be gone pretty quickly. Many would go to GoG, some just stop buying games. Bad Things do occasionally happen (bad things like those "oops, we don't actually have licenses for the music used in the game you bought" revokes), but Valve keeps succeeding in keeping it to a rather low background noise level. Competitors have two decades of being that good or better to catch up. You can't buy trust, you can just put money into not losing any of the trust that grew over time. When competitors have done that for two decades, Valve, unless they fail in the meantime, will have even more.

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

#385

Post by sjoedev »

whyenot wrote: post #361

There are (were) ~5,000 employees at Epic. That seems like a huge number for company that has produced little more than various flavors of Fortnite and a failure of a store in the last 10 years.

Do keep in mind: they also develop, maintain, support, and market Unreal Engine, which is possibly the most advanced and innovative game engine out there. It’s used by tons of other studios (including AAA) and is used in other industries like space flight, automotive, etc.

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

#386

Post by pants2 »

Anvoker wrote: 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…

Just wait till you learn how many people work at Calendly

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

#387

Post by hackyhacky »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #95
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…

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…

> they're losing money on vanity projects

Among other vanity projects, they hired Simon Peyton Jones, long the most prominent developer of Haskell, to build "Verse", Tim Sweeney's hobby language [1].

I'm sure SPJ isn't that expensive, but still, it's pretty far from Epic's "core mission."

[1] https://simon.peytonjones.org/verse-calculus/

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

#388

Post by cma »

hapticmonkey wrote: post #305
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

I think the Unreal Tournament 4 team was moved to Fortnite after the success of PUBG to rapidly turn it into a battle royale.

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

#389

Post by teamonkey »

4corners4sides wrote: post #26

Roblox is the elephant in the room here which fills the niche for freemium, fun 3D experiences that run on basically any platform or device.

Roblox accounts for about 50% of total video game play time, it’s insane how big Roblox is.

But not just Roblox. People are spending their time and money elsewhere too. Polymarket and sports betting for one.

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

#390

Post by abcde666777 »

A lot of folks wax sympathetic for the employees who've been laid off. But rare is the company which grows large and doesn't develop a lot of entropy in the process. Hiring beyond its needs, bloating, and mismanagement of resources.

Does the company owe a living to those people that it doesn't actually benefit from having on board? Sometimes it sounds like people think so.

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