News Epic Games Store

Ne64pCK.png


That entire Twitter discussion was spicy. I'm glad someone with a little bit of clout outright said it: Epic has been trying to lock developers in their ecosystem with Unreal Engine, EOS, EGS and websites like Artstation and Bandcamp while selling it to people as being righteous.
 
  • This!
  • Like
Reactions: Phoenix RISING, AHA-Lambda, Dandy and 11 others
Someone machine translated the description and features, too.
free, there will dance, will send skills of beauty and hero butler, there is a character special effects system, there is a dressing system, skin system, and MMO-style shooting, lobby chat, friends system, equipment system, props system, leaderboard system, view the results
Click to expand...
I want me a hero butler.
 
  • Toucan
  • Blobxorcism
Reactions: Morten88, ExistentialThought, Ge0force and 2 others
www.gamesindustry.biz

Epic files another Supreme Court appeal against Apple

Original story, 28 September, 2023: Epic Games has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling clearing Appl…
www.gamesindustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz

Epic Games has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling clearing Apple of violating antitrust laws on its App Store.

The Fortnite firm originally appealed to the Supreme Court in July to forbid Apple from preventing developers from directing users to third-party payment systems.

However, Bloomberg reports this was rejected in August.

As reported by GamesBeat, the Fortnite firm is now asking the highest court in the US to rule on broader antitrust legislation that "both pro- and anticompetitive effects is unlawful if a 'less restrictive alternative' will achieve the same benefits while harming competition less."

One of the things Epic specifically wants the court to determine is whether a 'less-restrictive alternative' must be free from costs to Apple, such as the 30% cut.

Apple has until September 28 to file a petition against Epic Games' most recent request, per Bloomberg. The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether or not to take this case by the end of the year.
Click to expand...

This is their last chance in the United States. If the SC rejects their appeal, then this chapter is done. There's still the Google trial starting in November and the FTC could go after Apple in the future.
 
  • Toucan
Reactions: Ge0force, ExistentialThought and lashman
Just from what we know: Fortnite has been on the decline, Unreal Engine doesn't make significant money and everything else they have tried hasn't been successful. Still, 900 is a ton. Even though I don't like the company, I hope the people affected quickly rebound.

Edit:

WshPlDj.png


Bandcamp and SuperAwesome are gone.
 
Last edited:
  • This!
  • Like
Reactions: xinek, C-Dub, ExistentialThought and 1 other person
www.epicgames.com

Layoffs at Epic

Earlier today Tim Sweeney sent the following email to Epic employees.
www.epicgames.com www.epicgames.com

Hi everyone,
As we shared earlier, we are laying off around 16% of Epic employees. We're divesting Bandcamp and spinning off most of SuperAwesome.


For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.


While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics.


Epic folks around the world have been making ongoing efforts to reduce costs, including moving to net zero hiring and cutting operating spend on things like marketing and events. But we still ended up far short of financial sustainability. We concluded that layoffs are the only way, and that doing them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances.


We're also making some divestitures. Bandcamp is joining Songtradr, a music marketplace company supporting artists. SuperAwesome’s advertising business will become an independent company under the SuperAwesome brand, led by their current CEO Kate O’Loughlin. Kids Web Services (KWS), the parent verification and consent management toolset, will remain part of Epic.


Saying goodbye to people who have helped build Epic is a terrible experience for all. The consolation is that we're adequately funded to support laid off employees: we’re offering a severance package that includes six months base pay and in the US/Canada/Brazil six months of Epic-paid healthcare. We’re offering to accelerate people’s stock option vesting schedule through the end of 2024 and are giving two additional years from today to exercise the options. In the US we’re also offering to vest any unearned profit sharing from their 401k. And we’ll provide benefits including career transition services and visa support where we can.


For those still at Epic, you’ll hear more from senior leaders about the path forward for your team. Epic’s prospects for the future are strong. We have amazing game experiences across multiple platforms. We’ve built the best engine in the world, and will be hosting Unreal Fest next week to bring the community together and spotlight the things they are building with Unreal Engine and UEFN. Creators are making a living building for the Fortnite ecosystem, with time in third-party games now exceeding first-party.


We're cutting costs without breaking development or our core lines of businesses so we can continue to focus on our ambitious plans. About two-thirds of the layoffs were in teams outside of core development. Some of our products and initiatives will land on schedule, and some may not ship when planned because they are under-resourced for the time being. We’re ok with the schedule tradeoff if it means holding on to our ability to achieve our goals, get to the other side of profitability and become a leading metaverse company.


-Tim


(Songtradr acquires Bandcamp from Epic Games)
(SuperAwesome Leadership to acquire company from Epic Games)


FAQs


What does this mean for Epic’s priorities?

  • We are still focused on shipping our must succeed initiatives: the next Fortnite Season and Fortnite Chapter 5, Del Mar, Sparks, and Juno. Their schedules remain in place.
  • We aren't cutting any core businesses, and are continuing to invest in games with Fortnite first-party development, the Fortnite creator ecosystem and economy, Rocket League and Fall Guys; and services for developers including Unreal Engine for games and enterprise, Epic Games Store, Epic Games Publishing, Epic Online Services, Kids Web Services, MetaHuman, Twin Motion, Quixel Mega Scans, Capturing Reality, ArtStation, Sketchfab and Fab.
  • We are divesting from Bandcamp and spinning off most of SuperAwesome.
  • We'll have a long company meeting later in October to talk about all of our efforts and priorities.

What was the scope of the layoffs?

  • We are laying off around 830 employees, or 16% of jobs. About two-thirds of the layoffs were in teams outside of core development.
  • Around 250 people are leaving Epic through our divestitures from Bandcamp and SuperAwesome
  • We're cutting costs without sacrificing development or lines of businesses so that means business functions are disproportionately impacted compared to development functions.

Will there be more layoffs?
  • No. These changes financially stabilize the business.
  • The entire goal of this process was to make our cost structure more sustainable and we believe that we have achieved this.

Will Epic continue hiring?

  • Yes. We will continue hiring for critical roles, while maintaining net-zero at our new size.

What about Project Liberty?
  • We've been taking steps to reduce our legal expenses, but are continuing the fight against Apple and Google distribution monopolies and taxes, so the metaverse can thrive and bring opportunity to Epic and all other developers.
Click to expand...
 
Is it wrong to post the exclusive foto of Tim Sweeney after he opened the financiall statements? It is called surprisedpikachu.jpg

But hey, free games are great, right? Too bad 900 people have to look for a job. But credit where it's due, I wish every employer (who can afford it) gave severance like this.
 
I'm confused. I thought Fortnite was still making billions a year for Epic?

On the other hand, EGS must have costed them lots of money. I'm curious how much EGS plays a role in all of this.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ExistentialThought
Layoffs suck. Hope everyone gets a new job soon.

Normal people facing the consequences of Tim Sweeney’s galaxy-brained business decisions. Meanwhile, he stays a billionaire.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lashman and ExistentialThought
Ge0force said:
I'm confused. I thought Fortnite was still making billions a year for Epic?

On the other hand, EGS must have costed them lots of money. I'm curious how much EGS plays a role in all of this.
Click to expand...
Fortnite still makes billions a year, but it's still down from its peak in 2018-2019. Last year Epic as a whole made "only" $4 billion which was down from $4.7 billion in 2021. Also back in March they announced a new revenue sharing plan with their Roblox-like mode that has cut into their overall profitability. In the letter I posted earlier, Tim outright says they were burning money and have to make cutbacks.

Edit: They're also increasing the price of V-Bucks. So they're doing a lot of belt tightening.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ExistentialThought
The whole thing with Epic mentioning Fortnite saw increased player counts but they're not making as much profit because of how expensive the new creator payouts are is so fucking funny because its another example of Epic trying to buy their way into a market without knowing anything about it.

Epic made their whole Fortnite Creative payouts very favourable for the developers because they wanted to strike at Roblox. They're even using the same payout method as Roblox where just playing a fortnite creative mode supports the creators. Roblox moved away from this monetization scheme 7 years ago and replaced it with gamepasses (microtransactions) because they lost so much money from it. They're STILL losing money because hosting millions of concurrent players across hundreds of thousands of games with millions of custom assets on their own servers is crazy expensive.

Such a stupid fucking company oh my god, They learned nothing from the EGS/Steam situation. Tim's personal crusade against Apple, Valve and Google is fucking them over and costing them billions, they can't afford to do shit like this forever.
 
  • Like
  • Sad
Reactions: Ge0force, Arc, lashman and 1 other person
Can’t wait to read the salty press release from Epic (written by Tim) announcing the company’s return to Steam, Google Play and the App Store, while announcing the closure of EGS.
 
  • Doubt
  • Toucan
Reactions: sk2k and Ge0force
I dunno about the App Store, Apple wanted to terminate their accounts which in turn would have caused issues with UE on their platform.
That seems a pretty definite burnt bridge.

They "came back" to iOS thanks to Amazon luna so far.
 
If the Supreme Court doesn't take the Apple case, the pragmatic thing to do would be to swallow your pride and go back to the App Store while continuing to lobby in Washington (which is what he should have been doing in the first place). Fortnite was doing about $300 million a year on iOS alone so he threw away hundreds of millions of dollars for a pointless crusade. The European Union is forcing Apple to allow alternate stores some time next year so there will probably be an EGS on iOS, even if it is limited to EU only.

The Google trial starts next month and I really haven't kept up with that one. He might just decide to stick on alternate app stores on Android (i.e. TapTap, Samsung Store etc).

I don't think they'll ever put their games on Steam unless Fortnite pulls an Overwatch 2 and craters in popularity and it's a desperation tactic.
 
  • This!
Reactions: Ge0force
ZKenir said:
I dunno about the App Store, Apple wanted to terminate their accounts which in turn would have caused issues with UE on their platform.
That seems a pretty definite burnt bridge.

They "came back" to iOS thanks to Amazon luna so far.
Click to expand...
Apple has said they’d be welcome back once the legal proceedings are over and both companies know where they stand.
 
  • Like
Reactions: xxr
Arc said:
I don't think they'll ever put their games on Steam unless Fortnite pulls an Overwatch 2 and craters in popularity and it's a desperation tactic.
Click to expand...
Single Player ones will likely end up on Steam after an undetermined time. That's my guess.

I can totally see AW remaster and 2 coming to Steam in like, IDK, 3-4 years.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: lashman, ExistentialThought and Arc
It depends on the game. Railgrade was published under the EGP label and the original developers got publishing rights back and are putting it on Steam and GOG. Alan Wake 2 will probably have a similar situation, but that one will take years before Remedy is given publishing rights.

However games that are from completely owned parts of Epic (i.e. Horizon Chase Turbo 2) will probably never release on Steam.
 
  • Sad
Reactions: lashman
Arc said:
It depends on the game. Railgrade was published under the EGP label and the original developers got publishing rights back and are putting it on Steam and GOG. Alan Wake 2 will probably have a similar situation, but that one will take years before Remedy is given publishing rights.

However games that are from completely owned parts of Epic (i.e. Horizon Chase Turbo 2) will probably never release on Steam.
Click to expand...
We are in the same boat here, yes :)

Specially with the last part, agree there.
 
  • Like
  • Sad
Reactions: ExistentialThought, Arc and lashman
Mor said:
Single Player ones will likely end up on Steam after an undetermined time. That's my guess.

I can totally see AW remaster and 2 coming to Steam in like, IDK, 3-4 years.
Click to expand...
I'm sure given the crap Remedy has had to go through going back as far as the MS deal on the 360, they probably have some very finely worded out-clauses in their publishing agreement that will get those games out on Steam with in a year or two.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lashman and Mor
gabbo said:
I'm sure given the crap Remedy has had to go through going back as far as the MS deal on the 360, they probably have some very finely worded out-clauses in their publishing agreement that will get those games out on Steam with in a year or two.
Click to expand...

I seriously doubt that. It's obvious Remedy doesn't care about PC at all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sk2k
1010 More Posts...
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom