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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

#501

Post by Frieren »

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…

> Unfortunately it is their employees that are paying the price of leadership

Neoliberalism at its finest. The world moving towards conservatism has left us with this model: The working class takes the hit of each crisis from small to big.

It is not a sustainable model.

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

#502

Post by cubefox »

mxfh wrote: post #242
cubefox wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game store doesn't need a lot of employees. A few years ago it was reported that Valve only needed about 70 employees to run Steam while it generated billions of dollars in Steam fees (30% per game). It's basically free money for Valve. I bet the situation is similar for the AppStore and Google Play. Though Unreal Engine does indeed need quite a few developers. Additionally, using UE is much cheaper (5% on games…

You know what contractors are?!

Yes. Do you have any evidence they use contractors for Steam?

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

#504

Post by meheleventyone »

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 are spending a lot of money on Fortnite’s UGC side in the form of paying developers for their games engagement as well.

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

#505

Post by Ekaros »

ryandrake wrote: post #463
jrozner wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I still don't like Steam. I resent that I have to have this "Store" middle man on my computer just to have access to games. I want to pay a company for their product on their web site, download the installer, and install it on my operating system directly. I don't want this other layer that I'm dependent on, who could switch off my access to the things I "bought" whenever they want.

Looking at what many of your games do I think it is better option. I have zero doubt that there wouldn't be countless downloaders and accounts and poorly written startup menus for each game and each publisher both big and small.

Simply getting installer would not be option for most games.

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

#506

Post by Ekaros »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #330
MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is necessarily what is happening. Roblox predates Fortnite by a decade and is only getting more popular over time

> I don’t think this is necessarily what is happening. 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.

I think these type of shooter games have significant competition. So you have games and genres that peak for times and then slowly or quickly get replaced. And entry to this is hard. You get lot of failures and few successes.

Counter-Strike might be a exception. It seems to keep older players well while still getting enough new ones. And also have enough gacha mechanics to make lot of money...

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

#507

Post by johnnyanmac »

Jensson wrote: post #469
johnnyanmac wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard the same thing for Discord last month, and reddit and Twitter a few years back. It kind of worked for Twitter due to be outstandiningly bad, but it still didn't "kill" Twitter in the colloquial sense. I don't see it going down any differently with Steam. It may take a dent and open up a competitor, but it won't do a move so catastrophic that it losses its leader status from that alone.

"pretty quickly" is a few years, not one month. Chrome dominated the browser market pretty quickly even though the richer bigger company microsoft already had most of the browser marketshare, and that was 3 years. Before those 3 years it seemed like nobody would be able to make a dent in microsofts monopoly, and then it was gone in just 3 years. If steams fumbles as hard as microsoft did with internet explorer they t…

The Reddit blackout is coming on 3 years old now. The twitter kerfuffle is almost 4? I'm not holding my breath.

And yes, chrome is a great example. That came right on the legs of Microsoft losing an anti trust case. For something that seems so quaint in 2026. I miss when regulations had teeth.

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

#508

Post by pjmlp »

pas wrote: post #365
jrozner wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

it was pretty meh back then, so people had pretty understandable reasons. it made LAN parties harder for example :) but it got a lot better. Epic had more money and time compared to Valve. and their store is still worse. sure, Steam has an enormous moat, but that won't be the case forever, Epic should be ready with a nice platform to exploit niches that Valve misses instead they hemorrhage money on things that does n…

Indeed people behave as if Gabe would live forever, or Valve's management will always take the perfect decisions.

Eventually like it comes to all of us, there will be time to a new generation of game stores, or gaming devices.

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

#509

Post by johnnyanmac »

iknowstuff wrote: post #488
johnnyanmac wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Roblox has had many high profile issues with it and their response is much more tepid than other platforms.

The response from other platforms is placating regulators by verifying IDs. Is that what we want?

Considering that they aren't properly separating the two groups, I don't see this "response" as anything but a weak excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.

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

#510

Post by pjerem »

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…

Steam is actually not that good as an application. It’s slow, it’s full of ads, the UI is complex …

But they are the Amazon of gaming : it’s a no brainer to buy games because you know you won’t get issues being reimbursed if it’s needed. Also SteamOS/Proton/Steam Deck are nice.

And EPIC managed to do worse than that.

I do feel GOG Galaxy could become a threat to Steam someday if they added official Linux support and a full screen version but last time I tried it it was pretty buggy.

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