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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

#261

Post by adrian17 »

LiamhCryptokeys wrote: post #118

The Valve comparison is apt. The difference is Valve built Steam as infrastructure first, then quietly stepped back from games. Epic did it backwards — they built the game first, then tried to force the infrastructure (EGS) into existence with money. Much harder to do it that way.

> Epic did it backwards — they built the game first, then tried to force the infrastructure (EGS) into existence with money.

Didn't Valve push Steam through HL2? It's a different kind of forcing of course, but still.

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

#262

Post by keyringlight »

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 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 the incumbents while trying to bring in more than a trivial amount of income. The only way I can see the outcome being different is if they were in the position Valve were in around 25 years ago with a fresh or poorly served market or something other than video games, few remember Stardock Desktop as a place they got their games.

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

#263

Post by IshKebab »

zaptrem wrote: post #194
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…

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…

> 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 Apple that WhatsApp have a watertight monopoly in most of Europe (and probably much of the rest of the world; I haven't checked). But it's pretty great for actually users. We've had at least a decade of totally free messaging that everyone has with no ads and e2e encryption.

Meta are just about starting to fuck it up but it's been a pretty great run.

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

#264

Post by malfist »

mzajc wrote: post #165
b3lvedere wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Epic Games store/browser is awful. I have bought one (insanely discounted) game on it and get all the free games, because i like to collect videogames. But i almost never play them, because the application is super slow. Steam has absolutely the best application, then (with a huge enormous gap) comes Gog, Amazon, Xbox, EA, Ubisoft and Epic at the rock bottom. I don't use Blizzards program, so i can't judge on tha…

> then (with a huge enormous gap) comes Gog My favourite thing about GOG is that it uniquely does not demand that you install their software, instead letting you download installers straight from the website. They're not fake netinstallers either, which doubles as a guarantee that I keep all of my games even if GOG goes bankrupt/bans my account/wipes my library/etc.

I was going to say that too. The other day I got annoyed by GoG's app constantly harassing me about updates that I just uninstalled it.

All my games are still installed and still work.

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

#265

Post by surgical_fire »

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…

Interestingly, I don't even think that the Epic Game Store was a vanity project. It was probably a good idea, they had a successful product and could build up their store out of it. Basically what Valve did originally.

But instead of focusing, you know, in making their story desirable to use, they focused on shit like exclusives. And for that, they should fail.

I prefer GoG over Steam, even while I am super grateful for Steam making gaming on Linux possible. And GoG didn't need to rely on exclusives for this.

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

#266

Post by Brybry »

zaptrem wrote: post #194
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…

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…

Nearly every time I add the free EGS games to my cart the checkout fails. I frequently have to restart the EGS client for checkout to work (and even then it fails often).

I launched EGS just now to time some comparisons and it's a black rectangle on my screen with no GUI (probably self-updating). I had to kill the process and restart it.

The Look and Feel for the EGS client just feels slow. Not that Steam is always amazing in this regard either but it's way better than EGS. Go to your EGS library and click between "favorites" and "all games". Switching from favorites to all games takes me ~4 seconds, every time (if you have any meaningful number of games).

The search/sort is slow. Steam's feels instant.

The library list has a ton of wasted space. In terms of vertical space, the Steam library lists three games for every game EGS lists.

The EGS social features compared to Steam are downright anemic (and Steam is pretty bad compared to something like Discord). You can't even set an avatar in EGS. Even EA's Store app (whatever they call Origin now) lets you do that.

I'll stop there. I could rant for much longer.

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

#267

Post by 3842056935870 »

bergheim wrote: post #215
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…

Everybody says this. It's so weird. How on earth will epic win without exclusives? It's like launching some Facebook competitor "but you get two profile pictures". Noone would switch. All these geeks singing steam and lamenting competition. Competition bad for me mkay, steam good. /me shakes head

[dead]

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

#268

Post by singron »

Epic's 2019 P&L was published as part of Epic v. Apple. According to that:

* Fortnight revenue was $5.5B in 2018 and $3.8B in 2019

* Employee counts in those years: 1063 and 1932

* Average "People" cost per employee: $141K, $142K (CPI adjusted is $182K in 2026).

* Average "Production & Hosting" cost per employee: $189K, $150K (CPI $248K, $194K)

* Platform royalty expenses were 25% of total game revenue

* Slightly under half their Operating Expenses were people

* Fortnight was >90% of revenue

I have a strong guess that "People" costs doesn't include all salaries, and that many employees are categorized under "Production & Hosting", although I expect that also includes other costs. I'll guess 75% is people, which makes total CPI adjusted average cost per employee somewhere around $320K-$370K, but I'll say $320K.

This means 5000 employees cost around $1.6B and cutting 1000 saved around $320M/year in addition to $500M of other costs.

Most estimates of Fortnight revenue claim it's roughly flat or falling between 2020 and 2025 fluctuating between $3B and $6B.

Unless Unreal Engine or EGS revenue took off, it's kind of weird to quadruple headcount while keeping revenue basically flat or falling. If fortnight only makes $2B next year, then they would be underwater on just royalties and salaries.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20696836/epic-apple-t...

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

#269

Post by lux-lux-lux »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #231
foolfoolz wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there’s a huge component to gamers that they are emotional and resistant to change. gamers hated steam when it came out. and now the backlash against epic store is huge. they haven’t done a good job fixing the perception of epic store the way steam did

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%.

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

#270

Post by guywithahat »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #214
guywithahat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell job postings in software are up this year. Executives love expanding, it's the most exciting part of the job. While there are many sectors inside software which may be doing better/worse, I can say my company is hiring, and I have no trouble getting interviews elsewhere if I want them. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

The difference is pay. Although there is a slight (almost negligible) uptick in job postings, the salaries for those jobs is rapidly declining.

I'm not sure if that's true? There are a few companies in every industry who pay well above average, and then most jobs pay a more normal salary (110-150 would be my estimate). Maybe you're just not looking at the top companies anymore? Even if it was dropping through I don't see how that's relevant
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