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honey_im_meat_grinding, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

The second good news for Godot today and I’m here for it

Phanatik,

How does this help Godot?

harpuajim,

What is Godot?

Chariotwheel,

A game engine

Weslee,

It’s an open source game engine that has received alot exposure since the whole Unity fiasco

atocci,

Why is Godot?

z500,
@z500@lemmy.world avatar

No one ever asks how is Godot…

crius,

Godot is an open source game engine that is incredibly trending among the “hipster” developers community and fanatics of FOSS.

It’s absolutely not even close to the features offered by Unreal Engine or Unity but people that are barely informed are all excited because now an open source project with some serious bugs and limitations “will show them”.

Unless there is a serious rewrite, Godot will never be a valid alternative to the two main commercial engines. And with the fact that it had been recently heavily rewritten to be updated to v4, it is really improbable that it will happen soon.

Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Unless there is a serious rewrite, Godot will never be a valid alternative to the two main commercial engines

How so? I’ve seen complaints about the C# API and some similar challenges, but nothing show-stopping. Obviously you won’t be making a AAA game in it, but for indies it looks like a decent option.

The dirty secret of software is that any given user-facing OSS application is about 15 years behind the closed-source competitors, but the fact is that most software was good-enough 15 years ago and the industry has spent the last 15 years on cloudifying and A-B testing and GUI revamping and other stuff that isn’t basic functionality.

crius,

The thing is, even Indies can look and feel like AAA games (well, the good ones) with something unreal engine for example.

I’m not a fan of Epic by any means but all I’m saying is that they asinine aren’t in the same league while with Unity they could at least be close.

Unity have done a real shitty moves but all this “We’ll do even better without it” attitude that I’m seeing around is either coming from people that just think “shitty move” or really really really naive developers.

kiku123,

I guess that since Epic owns Unreal Engine that bad news for Epic means good news for Godot?

I don’t think that Epic is going to want to divest from Unreal considering how much money it makes.

I also don’t think that it’s a zero-sum game. As a developer I want Unreal (and Unity) to be great so it creates more competition. Unreal has led the way in a lot of cool gaming tech that Godot is picking up.

Rose,

Epic actually invested in Godot with their MegaGrant. Godot is also available on the Epic store.

mammut,

Maybe it was reverse psychology. Epic is trying to destroy the competition by giving them money. Then, paranoid gamers will refuse to use or support Godot, because there’s a connection to Epic.

Ranjeliq,
@Ranjeliq@programming.dev avatar

Epic also gave money to Lutris, while Epic’s CEO was smearing Linux users on twitter, so I wouldn’t count on Epic’s stance on things and where some of Epic’s money going aligning any time soon. Those megagrants feel very disingenuous to me (doesn’t mean that those money do not help those “underdog” projects, though).

YeetPics, do gaming w Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Capcom’s CEO salary is too high

ursakhiin,

I just double checked and I think I will continue my trend of but buying Capcom games. The few IPs I may have been interested in I can definitely live without.

Jaysyn, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

The effects of the SVB bankruptcy are still rippling out.

Also, I thought Apple owned Bandcamp.

spudwart,
@spudwart@spudwart.com avatar

I think you’re thinking of GarageBand.

infinitepcg,

or Bootcamp

IHeartBadCode,
@IHeartBadCode@kbin.social avatar

I think this might have more to do with the beating that Epic took from Apple in court. The 2021 decision in favor of Apple, of their lawsuit for anti-competitive behavior was upheld this year. That was not cheap to litigate that and was a major loss for Epic.

I think the Bandcamp sell off is a good indicator of all of this. Epic obtained Bandcamp in March 2022, to explicitly have their IAP system integrated into it. Google shut them down and told them they would start collecting the 30% usual due. Epic filed suit and Google gave them an exception for the time being with the agreement that 10% would be held in escrow until the conclusion of the trail. With many of the arguments in the Apple case similar to Google's case, I'm pretty sure Epic sees the loss coming from a mile away.

All in all, what I think can be drawn from this. Epic made a big bet on "their store" and that's fading away with mobile devices locking people into a marketplace that is "distinctly not Epic". While putting such a bet wouldn't normally kill a company, Epic sextupled down on it and I think how hard they went for "their marketplace" is what's done them in.

LetMeEatCake,

That and the EGS seem to be where Epic funneled all their profits from the height of Fornite. That neither has worked out puts them on shakier ground. How many billions of dollars has been spent on EGS with it being way behind their revenue targets?

As things stand, Epic has very little in the way of a next big revenue source when Fortnite starts to fade as something new takes its place. That (probably) isn’t right around the corner but it will happen eventually. Their bet was on running major digital storefronts; that hasn’t worked out. UE will continue to make good money but not anywhere near enough to sustain the company as it is. UE is simply far smaller than something like FN.

This is likely them realizing this in conjunction with what you said. They need a new big revenue source in the pipeline, since digital storefronts won’t be it. Whatever that next thing is will need lots of money.

echo64,

SVB has nothing to do with this, it’s crazy that people think that SVB is a cause and not a symptom.

callouscomic, do gaming w Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’

I say big budget games are too large in scope. Too much going on, too ambitious, too much emphasis on certain aspects that I feel developers value more than consumers. Not every game needs to be the biggest baddest game of the year blah blah blah.

saigot,

For real, I think it’s rather telling that there are people who exclusively play some triple a games for the mini games.

It’s also interesting seeing indie take larger and larger chunks from the triple a market. Remember when harvest moon and simcity were big corporate endeavors, now it’s indie titles like city skylines and stardew Valley.

I would like to see some smaller projects from triple a studios targeting genres other than open world action-rpg.

Sina,

studios targeting genres other than open world action-rpg.

With the corporate culture that’s developed in the industry I don’t think anyone should want that. Indie has the small project space covered & they make far better games than EA or Activision ever could in those genres. Corporate sellouts cannot beat passion, but they can make games so large in scope that small studios just cannot compete with that.

GoodEye8,

Yeah. Every time someone comes up with “games are too cheap” I always point to the fact that the vast majority of AAA games have insane amount of bloat. If AAA devs were struggling to make a profit then a clear way to cut costs would be to streamline the product. If leveling is not vital, cut it. If randomized loot is not necessary, cut it. If horse balls shrinking/expanding with the weather is not necessary, cut it.

There are always ways to cut corners in a AAA games and if the cost was an issue they’d do it. But the fact that they don’t shows how little the actually struggle. So far Bethesda is the only company that is clearly cutting the corners of their AAA products.

Sina, (edited )

So far Bethesda is the only company that is clearly cutting the corners of their AAA products.

Starfield is the sloppiest Bethasda game ever, cutting corners to save cost is not how I would describe its development at all.

I agree with what you are saying though. Spending 40% of the budget on voice acting and cinematographic dialog is extremely wasteful. As long as the gameplay is good and graphics are pretty gamers will like the product.

jivemasta,

Is it really the sloppiest though?

I’d say its about on par with their past games. It’s clearly their game engine, modified to do space stuff.

If you come at it with the mindset that not every game has to get bigger and more expansive and have more and more realism/mechanics that don’t serve the core gameplay, it achieves it’s goal.

Not saying its game of the year material or anything, but if I was doing an employee review, I’d give it a meets expectations grade.

ursakhiin,

Starfield is by far their cleanest release. It’s honestly the first game I have played from them that hasn’t crashed in 100+ hours.

There are aspects I wish had received a bit more attention, sure. But to date, Skyrim and Fallout 4 both have stability mods that are basically requirements to reduce crashing.

And I’m saying this as somebody with near 2k hours in Skyrim. So I definitely enjoy that game.

Sina,

I played Morrowind, Oblivion & Skyrim at release. Compared to Starfield they were far more polished to me. Yes crashes & the odd broken quest happened, but overall they were playable, people without an internet connection could buy the games in a shop & then finish them. Also Oblivion had the best graphics for an open world rpg when it came out, while also running pretty well on the shit tier GPUs of the time. In my mind, Starfield is not pretty on ultra, runs like shit on decent hardware even at relatively low settings and the list of broken things is endless.

ursakhiin,

I’m honestly not experiencing the same. I’m running on ultra with an RTX 3080 and rarely even see a stutter and the only consistent bug I see is just comical. When I sprint for a bit and enter a door, my companion will be sprinting into a wall for a bit.

I actually do find Starfield to be a pretty game, as well. They have learned better lighting strategies from previous games and the trees look much much better. I wish the facial and running animations were better, but that’s not so bad as to be too skewer the game.

As far as Oblivion having the best graphics of it’s time, sure. But 2006 basically every game that was going for good graphics achieved the best at release. That was a pivotal period for graphics in games.

Moonguide,

Honestly, I’d rather have stellar voice acting and okay graphics (not good, just not bad enough to turn it off after it makes me dizzy) than the other way around. Graphics lose their appeal after a short while in-game.

Sina,

Imagine if people could buy a background music only -subtitle dialog- edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 for €40. How would the sale distribution go? I think this is a rather interesting thought experiment, I would personally opt to buy the cheaper version for sure, even though I do know the voice acting in BG3 is a landmark in gaming.

Evergreen5970,

I would definitely buy that. I usually keep my game volumes on low and click through the dialogue because I already read the subtitle, why wait around to finish having the line delivered verbally? (Interestingly enough I’ve never ever thought “hurry up, speak faster” in an in real life conversation, this impatience only exists in video games.) Because of the value of voice acting, but for me personally voice acting is just not a priority.

souma, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

TiL Epic had purchased BandCamp

DocBlaze,

God damnit if I didn’t open this post to write this, verbatim

Honestly after unity shit the bed and payday 3 looks like a turd they probably realized they don’t need to try as hard anymore on unreal and fortnite, respectively

harpuajim, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

Does Lemmy (this community specifically) circlejerk as hard as reddit does when it comes to Epic bad?

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

well…Epic is bad cuz corporate.

Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

Very yes. I like Lemmy but there’s a lot of “corporation bad giv updoot” here.

Phanatik,

There's so few instances of corporations doing actually good things so opinions tend to skew negative. Epic hasn't been thought of fondly since they started doing those exclusivity deals to try and bring people to their platform rather than making their platform a worthy competitor to Steam.

spudwart,
@spudwart@spudwart.com avatar

That’s because corporation is bad, giv updoot.

Rose,

It’s very rare that those who hate Epic also hate Valve though, so it’s not about standing against a corporation. People just defend what they are used to and Epic disrupts that.

dandi8, (edited )

I'll be the first to say that I only begrudgingly accept Steam exists. However, I avoid using it and vastly prefer GOG due to the DRM-free nature of their store and the offline installers.

Just because the hate on Epic is vocal does not mean that everyone likes the Steam status quo.

Rose,

GOG has 0.5 to 2% of the market share, so I see no contradiction in my point on the scenario being rare.

Aceticon,

You’re presuming the contributors to Lemmy are just the same in their choices of gaming as the broader market.

It doesn’t take that much reading of posts in Lemmy to conclude that it’s heavilly biased towards adults, techies and lefties.

In Statistics you can only make presumptions about a subset of subjects from statistical distribution data from the whole universe of subjects if the subset has been randomly selected, which this one most definitelly hasn’t - if only because of the “Reddit migration” Lemmy is filled with people with a certain kind of mindset (the ones for whom the actions of the Reddit CEO were displeasing enough to make them want to move and who actually had the will to do so) which isn’t at all the average person’s behaviour (the “average” just stayed there) plus even the Reddit population was already not representative of gamers generally (older in general).

The general market share of GOG might give you a hint that here too it’s likely going to have fewer customers than something like Steam, but judging by comments I’ve read here it’s probably more than 2%, at least amongst commenters (no idea about lurkers).

cottonmon,
@cottonmon@lemmy.world avatar

Nor does it mean that the hate towards Epic doesn’t have any basis. They did a lot of shit that caused them to have a bad reputation.

DocBlaze,

epic is a lawful good with epic mega grants, but their partial owner tencent is lawful evil. if Sweeney ever loses a controlling amount of shares to them, I’m likely done with them for good.

brawleryukon,
@brawleryukon@lemmy.world avatar

if Sweeney ever loses a controlling amount of shares to them

To be clear, he can’t “lose” shares to them. He might willingly sell shares to them (although that’s unlikely as he’s shown no indication of giving anyone else control over the company thus far), but it’s a private company - the shares aren’t just out there for Tencent to buy up and force a takeover.

DocBlaze, (edited )

He might willingly sell shares to them

this is what I meant. unlikely but fortnite won’t be a cash cow forever.

ParadoxSeahorse,

I think more likely is he’ll end up giving them 40% of the profits for nothing in return… and so have to lay people off despite turning a profit…

JasSmith,

It's getting pretty tiring on Reddit. You'd think Sweeney were Hitler. I get that Epic's exclusives were annoying, but they also give us free games every week. The hate is far past justification.

Hawke,

Nah, fuck ‘em for hating on Linux too. If they put as much effort into supporting it as they do to opposing it there’d be a lot more love for Epic.

Rose,

Opposing it? EOS supports Linux, EAC works on the Deck, and Epic regularly invest in things like Lutris. Sure, there are no native Linux ports on the Epic store, but that’s not been the general direction of the industry either. Proton/Wine can still be used to run the games sold by Epic.

Hawke, (edited )

I’d put buying Psyonix (rocket league) and immediately killing Linux support as particularly damning, but Tim Sweeneys dislike of Linux is well known.

And … odd coincidence “payday 2 coming to epic games but drops linux support”

Rose, (edited )

Rocket League also dropped Mac support, which would be perfectly compatible with the store, so you can’t argue it was about Linux. The actual reason was the need to upgrade to DX11.

Payday 2 has no connection to Epic, but it’s common for developers to revisit and update games when releasing on a new platform. For example, the upcoming Steam port of THPS 1+2 even has a new developer behind it, and set to include achievements and potentially other perks.

There are also games like Rust that have dropped native Linux support without any ties to Epic.

Edit: Fixed an improperly formatted link.

dylanTheDeveloper,
@dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world avatar

Yes

guacupado,

Why do people always say this as if these forums are some niche group and not a huge spread of the general population?

If you’re seeing multiple communities with a general opinion, maybe it’s “people hate them” instead of “why do all these different groups hate the same thing?”

NocturnalMorning, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

Good thing I’m developing all of my games in Unreal right now.

dylanTheDeveloper, (edited )
@dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world avatar

Unity has fallen, billions must use blueprints

scytale, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

I wonder what this means for bandcamp. It’s one of the only few options where musicians can actually earn from their work.

thesmokingman,

Like other commenters here, I’m hopeful. Epic owning Bandcamp was pretty scary. They never really answered questions about it and a lot of folks were worried it could have gone the Epic Store route. Epic might honestly have sucked up all the data and sold it off already, though. We don’t know what the future will hold; I feel like no Epic is at worst a neutral position. Songtradr is at least in the music business and isn’t headed by Tim Sweeney.

ryper, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

They’re also increasing the price of V-Bucks to try to get even more money out of Fortnite players.

guacupado,

This is the part that blows my mind. When you have a money-printing machine like Fortnite and you still manage to lose money, maybe it’s the CEO you need to be firing.

Fazoo, do gaming w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce
@Fazoo@lemmy.ml avatar

Almost like crying about Steam “exclusives”, creating an actual exclusivity PC war, and handing out free games to prop up a shitty marketplace and launcher wasn’t such a good financial decision…

TheYang,
@TheYang@lemmy.world avatar

Well, competition for Valve might not be the worst thing.
On the other Hand I’m not sure if we would have gotten vive or steam deck if valve didn’t have a money printing machine with steam.
I’m rather certain that most companies would be worse for consumers, with the level of monopoly (/market dominance) that steam enjoys

Legion0FAnnoying,
@Legion0FAnnoying@vivaldi.net avatar

@TheYang @Fazoo
Really like your perspective on it. Watching Disney and EA scoop up multiple IPs than misuse them like they are really puts Valve into perspective lol. At least Valve has the Steam Sales which is the most consumer friendly i've ever seen in recent history lol. Next to Sega promoting us to scream at our teachers and parents lmao.

SRo, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

Lol

ClockworkOtter, do games w Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp

The Bandcamp sale is hopefully good news. Songtradr looks like they’re just in the music business and don’t (from their Wikipedia page) have any obviously dodgy investors.

magikmw,

Narrator: No dodgy investors… Yet.

ClockworkOtter,

Indeed

Pxtl,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

They also bought 7digital.com this year, which is a site I sometimes buy MP3s from since they have a better selection of mainstream record-label stuff than Bandcamp (no Amazon MP3s here in Canada).

qyron, do gaming w Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’

You want to bet this kind of iluminated wisdom is what is going to push small independent studios and indie authors to the front line?

RickRussell_CA, do gaming w Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’

Capcom has absolute authority to price its games however they see fit.

If they make choices that put them out of business, that’s on them.

reverendsteveii, do gaming w Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’
pythonoob,

At this point every game company would have to produce super solid, super polished games for like 4 years before they’d get my trust back.

reverendsteveii,

Wanna know which game I last broke my “no pre-orders” rule for?

No Man’s Sky. The game that was a tech demo for the first year or so after release. It’s become a hell of a game since then, but it taught me a valuable lesson and I haven’t bought a game since then.

It’s kinda the natural progression of late stage hypercapitalism though. Used to be that you spent all your money up front, then your sales recouped your investment and hopefully generated you a profit. Once game companies figured out OTA patches they realized that they can push a lot of QA back until after release and use pre-orders and day 1 sales to fund it. Then with DLC they realized that they can sell the untested skeleton of a game up front and use presales and early sales to fund development. The natural progression seems to be the Star Citizen model, where you get huge chunks of your sales up front and use that to determine what you’ll develop and when (if ever) you’ll release it

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