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Tim Sweeney on Layoffs at Epic
- surajrmal 3y agoInteresting that he made a commitment that there would not be additional rounds of layoffs.
- omershapira 3y agoLayoffs always suck, and the things and people Epic are getting rid of will hurt everyone, but credit is due for allocating the budget to take care of everyone, including accelerating the vesting schedule. The communication around the layoffs, the "why" and "what now" make sense. If you have to pivot, learn from this communique.
- richardlblair 3y agoI liked that they are also giving 2 yrs to exercise their options
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nerdjon 3y agoI saw this comment and opened it expecting it to maybe just be 2 months of pay due to the Warn act. So was prepared to point out that they are not doing it freely. But honestly yeah, at 6 months of pay and benefits. It still sucks and gettin laid off can affect you emotionally with the "why me" question. But 6 months is enough to fend off the panic that could set in. Layoffs suck and unfortunately are just a reality, sometimes they really can't be avoided. They deserve some credit for how they are handling it.
- GreedClarifies 3y ago6 months of vesting? That's a real benefit. I wish big tech had done something like that. Very generous. Of course it would have been far more expensive for big tech to do it.
- sitzkrieg 3y agoor anyone really
- bink 3y agoI read it's not just 6 months of vesting, it's the entirety of 2024.
- darknavi 3y agoMicrosoft did at least: > Benefit-eligible U.S. employees are to receive severance, six months of health care and stock vesting, and 60 days of notice, Nadella wrote. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/google-amazon-microsoft-meta-twitter-severance-packages-compared.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/google-amazon-microsoft-meta...
- iwonthecase 3y ago> including accelerating the vesting schedule. Just curious, but how useful are stock options in a company that's 30+ years old and still private?
- acegopher 3y agoWhile I'm not familiar with Epic, large private companies I've been involved with in the past often have an internal market that has an independent auditor set the stock price and the company provides liquidity by authorizing a pool of money for buying and selling shares.
- glanzwulf 3y ago> For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn I guess giving away free games and not charging deveveloper (or charging very little depending on exclusivity deals) wasn't the best financial decision. Who would've thought? Shame about the people impacted by this, I actually know some of them, hope they find something quick.
- jncfhnb 3y agoI would wager the free games have been a net positive to their bottom line in terms of customer acquisition. Most games are not big ticket items, and the ones that are are usually out of a push to sell new DLC or a new sequel. I’m guessing it’s not that expensive. I buy everything off of EGS if I can because of it, even though the EGS is trash
- kipchak 3y agoSome of these numbers came out in the Apple suit, it worked out to about $2.37 per user with 7% going on to pay for something giving a cost of $33.23 per paying customer acquired, and an estimated revenue of $40 per paying customer. https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418782/epic-games-store-free-games-cost-apple-trial-arkham-subnautica-mutant-year-zero https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418782/epic-games-store-...
- mywittyname 3y agoThey are trying to break into a pretty entrenched marketplace. Steam has a huge head start, EA owns the rights to some of the best selling franchises in the business, and Xbox marketplace has the backing of Microsoft. Their options to become a major player are limited. Aggressively spending money on customer acquisition was probably the best move they had. Pulling their new games from competing stores risks impacting their game sales. Relying on organic growth would probably see Epic Game Store stuck as another tertiary, niche marketplace, like Gog. It may not have worked out like they hoped, but it wasn't a bad play.
- glanzwulf 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- adamrezich 3y agothat's some reasonably nice severance
- snarfy 3y agoI'm still bitter that they unilaterally killed the entire Unreal Tournament franchise, pulled all games from all stores and turned off the master servers with no explanation. I could understand maybe turning off the master servers to cut costs, but lets be honest, they could have hosted the entire franchise master servers on a raspberry pi. There was no need to pull the games from stores. They all but guaranteed there will never be any new players and the existing players all resort to piracy now when needing a new install. At least give an explanation.
- icandoit 3y agoAt some point your new ventures compete with your old successes. What would you and others have payed for a Unreal Tournament monthly subscription? Not much I assume. If you are a land lord you want the home-owner slice to shrink and the renter slice to grow. Gross, right? I was interested in their Verse programming language, but it's future looks grimmer now.
- jncfhnb 3y agoWhy is it’s future looking grimmer?
- rescripting 3y agoProbably because of https://www.epicgames.com/site/de/news/layoffs-at-epic https://www.epicgames.com/site/de/news/layoffs-at-epic
- jncfhnb 3y agoSeems like a weak argument to me. Is that it?
- abecedarius 3y agoI didn't see any specifics that obviously bear on Verse development.
- fidotron 3y ago> 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. ... > 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'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. They are absolutely positioning Fortnite as a higher fidelity Roblox, with a view to becoming a whole gaming platform. It is a curious strategy to attack the legal foundations of one App Store while you attempt to build your own. One of the bits of noise bouncing around the games industry is the extent to which UEFN is being seen as a sort of proving ground for teams and ideas. How viable it actually is as a business has yet to be seen.
- jncfhnb 3y agoI don’t think it’s that curious. Epic’s argument is that the App Store is fully closed and uses that forced exclusivity to take an unfair share of things, while also controlling things like discoverability. Epic’s platforms are 60% cheaper than Valve and Apple, allows for in app purchases that don’t leverage epic and thus give them no money, and from the sound of it is much more creator friendly than something like the ridiculous economics of Roblox (not familiar with it though)
- brookst 3y agoIt’s a great business model. Let someone else take the risks and sell the hardware, then use regulators to open the complementary goods to be undercut. Assuming they eventually win against Apple, they will make a fortune when they take on the console market with the precedent.
- 3y ago
- thanhhaimai 3y agoDo we know how much money Epic spent on the legal fights with Apple/Google compared to the rest of their operation expenses?
- jrmg 3y agoI think this is a good question - as is the question of if they can really expect to achieve what they want for ‘the metaverse’ and Fortnite without Fortnite being available on iPhone.
- dylan604 3y agocurious minds would like to know over here as well. add to that, the loss of sales for throwing the tantrum and taking their ball and going home. where's the punishment for those involved in that business venture?
- rideontime 3y agoHe’s still not answering the question on everyone’s mind: did he take a pay cut?
- spir 3y agoIt seems that Western society is divided over the question as to whether or not employers have some broader duty of care to their employees beyond the economic arrangement of employment. If the CEO of a factory had to sell half their maintenance-hungry machines to balance the budget, do they owe it to the sold or retained machines to take a pay cut so they "share in the harm of the layoffs"? The factory machine example is silly because they are machines and offensive because many people would agree that employees are very much not machines.
- klyrs 3y ago> If the CEO of a factory had to sell half their maintenance-hungry machines to balance the budget... ... then they're clearly in dire straits and the company should be looking at any cut they could make including the CEO's compensation. Payment in stock devalues the stock; payment in cash decreases the runway.
- rideontime 3y agoI agree, that is a very silly example.
- spir 3y ago
- haunter 3y ago>Del Mar, Sparks, and Juno Funny that he is revealing codnames like this which are more or less not-secret thanks to dataminers but still. Del Mar = Racing mode in Fortnite Juno = LEGO collab in Fortnite (probably even a whole season)
- HellDunkel 3y agoHa! Thanks for clearing that up- was there a leak?
- haunter 3y agoThe racing mode has been semi-secretly updated through the whole year, files added with each new update [0] LEGO invested $1b into Epic last year [1] so people were already joking about some kind of collab then. In January the UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fornite) actually had an update with the whole LEGO brickset databse imported into it [2] and there was an internal memo leak this May that they are actually working on a LEGO collab 0, https://twitter.com/iFireMonkey/status/1686125878890115072 https://twitter.com/iFireMonkey/status/1686125878890115072 1, https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/sony-and-kirkbi-invest-in-epic-games-to-build-the-future-of-digital-entertainment https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/sony-and-kirkbi-in... 2, https://twitter.com/GMatrixGames/status/1614276121012445184 https://twitter.com/GMatrixGames/status/1614276121012445184
- flashgordon 3y ago"you used to be cool man. You changed man!" Seriously I grew up playing his games as a kid and when I saw his name in the credits there was a certain warm and tingly feeling of respect and adulation. And now this. I get it shareholders are always #1. Still...
- jncfhnb 3y agoHe owns the majority of the company. It’s not public. I think Tim is still cool.
- andybak 3y agoBillionaires are not your friends: https://twitter.com/ethangach/status/1643731543490277376 https://twitter.com/ethangach/status/1643731543490277376
- inemesitaffia 3y agoNeither are celebrities in the media
- andybak 3y agoAre we now just listing "people who aren't your friends" or are you making a specific point?
- inemesitaffia 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37710007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37710007 This.
- andybak 3y agoI don't follow. I was making the point that Tim Sweeney is not a terribly good role model for "enlightened management" in light of his actions when his own interests are threatened.
- major505 3y agoHe still payging six months of health care. My wife was fired in the last round of layofs in google and they onely paid for healthcare until the end of the month. EPic have better severance than google....
- jncfhnb 3y agoVisa support is a nice thing too. I don’t think I have seen that before.
- returningfory2 3y agoI've seen it a few times, but honestly in the US I feel it's not much more than "thoughts and prayers". If you're on a H-1B and get laid off, you need to find a new job within 2-4 months or else you have to leave the US. No amount of "visa support" from the company that laid you off gets around this rule.
- honkycat 3y agoI just got laid off from somewhere else. They didn't even cover healthcare for the rest of the month. Barely any severance. Has anyone else gotten laid off? How is the market out there? I have 12 years of experience and am not a slouch. Haven't really started looking in earnest yet.
- spicymaki 3y agoI have not been laid off, but everyone I know from my company that has been laid off has found another job.
- sydbarrett74 3y agoCredit to Tim for at least trying to make the best of a bad situation. Most CEO's wouldn't even care enough to make the attempt.
- tpmx 3y agoBesides what has been otherwise discussed - you've got to him credit for clear and direct communication. (Still not quite sure why he/Epic bought a music streaming company like Bandcamp; seems a bit of a stretch even considering content licensing for Epic-based games.)
- hbosch 3y agoOne thing I worry about is Bandcamp. I was worried when Epic bought them, and I'm even more worried now as they were divested to a company I've never heard of... Bandcamp has for so long been a boon to independent music and musicians, and allowed them to sell their work (and whatever else) on their own terms, more or less, in a way that I thought was radical and fair compared to most other marketplaces today. Not to mention the Myspace-esque customizations you can make to your album pages! Hopefully Bandcamp continues on for a long time relatively untouched.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoSold
- starshadowx2 3y ago>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 Interesting he mentions investing in Fall Guys specifically when Mediatonic was hit really heavily by these layoffs.
- mertbio 3y agoThis is what happens when you fight with Apple. They are losing money from the legal battle and also by not being on iPhone. With Vision Pro and Apple’s interest in gaming, they could position themselves very well and earn tons of money but instead they wanted to reduce the commission they pay to Apple. They are doing amazing stuff with Unreal Engine, it is sad that Apple is partnering with Unity instead of Unreal Engine.
- HellDunkel 3y agoWe are lucky at least Epic is fighting this battle. The federal anti-trust division needs to wake up!