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I know that everyone is commenting that this is the end of their independence. But, Epic Games has been really good to everyone they've acquired. Quixel is a gr

I know that everyone is commenting that this is the end of their independence. But, Epic Games has been really good to everyone they've acquired. Quixel is a great example. They protected Improbable when it was under licensing attack by Unity and they gave away $25 mil to help fund development for them when they didn't have to. They've given out lots of no strings attached megagrants when they didn't have to and they receive no direct revenue from. Those grants have helped independent open source 3rd party tools like Blender and Krita with no strings and no required oversight from Epic. And, some of those megagrants helped Unity and not Epic, e.g. the dialogue tool, but they didn't take backsies on their grant. They designed the grants to help the entire game industry and not just them. They have a very lawful good alignment as a company. They're an example of a really decent parent company IMHO. Also, Epic has a really solid financial foundation from Fortnite and their Unreal game engine so they're easily able to give independence to their subsidiaries without nervously micromanaging. Bandcamp is awesome so I hope I'm right.

sickcodebruh 5y ago
I didn’t know about these acquisitions, I really hope you’re right. At the moment, I’m heartbroken because of this. I’ve been using Bandcamp for a very long time now and it has been the single best thing to happen to independent music and musicians in the modern age. For me, one of its best features was the fact that it barely changed in all that time. It seemingly never chased the metrics that drive similar platforms to reinvent themselves constantly, so it’s always been a reliable, predictable partner. It’s the only product like it that I can think of where I can say that I truly believe that our interests are (were) aligned. Now? It seems like a matter of time until their flashy front-end revamp, their new profit share agreement, a DRM option, a proprietary music player to compete with Spotify. I’m going to hope that their commitment to not changing dramatically holds true, but almost every acquisition starts with an email like this, so I’m not holding my breath. And one of the worst parts, Bandcamp’s dominance is so thorough and its users so loyal that I’m unaware of a true competitor in their space. I’m not sure what I’d do if they did get progressively crappier.
- palisade 5y ago
  Of all the companies they could have been acquired by we're probably lucky it was Epic.

sickcodebruh 5y ago

I didn’t know about these acquisitions, I really hope you’re right. At the moment, I’m heartbroken because of this. I’ve been using Bandcamp for a very long time now and it has been the single best thing to happen to independent music and musicians in the modern age. For me, one of its best features was the fact that it barely changed in all that time. It seemingly never chased the metrics that drive similar platforms to reinvent themselves constantly, so it’s always been a reliable, predictable partner. It’s the only product like it that I can think of where I can say that I truly believe that our interests are (were) aligned. Now? It seems like a matter of time until their flashy front-end revamp, their new profit share agreement, a DRM option, a proprietary music player to compete with Spotify. I’m going to hope that their commitment to not changing dramatically holds true, but almost every acquisition starts with an email like this, so I’m not holding my breath. And one of the worst parts, Bandcamp’s dominance is so thorough and its users so loyal that I’m unaware of a true competitor in their space. I’m not sure what I’d do if they did get progressively crappier.

palisade 5y ago
Of all the companies they could have been acquired by we're probably lucky it was Epic.