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Which still means that this change doesn't add any value. I'm uninterested in if it is "fair" or not.

diggan 3y ago
So if someone builds something of value but doesn't charge for it until 2 years later, you'd say that they aren't providing value with this change? I mean, I get what you mean, but seems needlessly pedantic to just "forget" the thing that is being charged for and because there was no other changes made with the new price being added, the change itself isn't adding any value. Regardless, I get what you mean, no value for you that they start charging. True.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  What I'm saying is that in the aggregate that as more companies are doing that it begins to look like the proverbial "rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic" or "everyone looking for their seats before the music stops". This is because macroeconomically everyone's sales numbers are someone else's expenses. You can get down into the weeds where even though this is just resource allocation of capital that it is doing useful work in the economy to correct a misallocation of capital, but my point is more that this is a late-business cycle signal. Businesses are looking at their finances and looking at the interest rate environment and trying to squeeze more sales out of their existing customers. That is an indicator that the financials at Epic Games probably weren't trending in a good direction. And I'm unsurprised to find this fairly recent news article: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/28/epic-games-is-eliminating-16percent-of-its-workforce-and-selling-bandcamp.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/28/epic-games-is-eliminating-16... Even with the success of UE and Fortnite they're still a money losing business. They've probably been surviving off of cheap debt since 2009 but that has now ended. Multiply that by all the businesses in the Russell 3000 or whatever that have been doing exactly the same thing.

So if someone builds something of value but doesn't charge for it until 2 years later, you'd say that they aren't providing value with this change? I mean, I get what you mean, but seems needlessly pedantic to just "forget" the thing that is being charged for and because there was no other changes made with the new price being added, the change itself isn't adding any value. Regardless, I get what you mean, no value for you that they start charging. True.

lamontcg 3y ago
What I'm saying is that in the aggregate that as more companies are doing that it begins to look like the proverbial "rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic" or "everyone looking for their seats before the music stops". This is because macroeconomically everyone's sales numbers are someone else's expenses. You can get down into the weeds where even though this is just resource allocation of capital that it is doing useful work in the economy to correct a misallocation of capital, but my point is more that this is a late-business cycle signal. Businesses are looking at their finances and looking at the interest rate environment and trying to squeeze more sales out of their existing customers. That is an indicator that the financials at Epic Games probably weren't trending in a good direction. And I'm unsurprised to find this fairly recent news article: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/28/epic-games-is-eliminating-16percent-of-its-workforce-and-selling-bandcamp.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/28/epic-games-is-eliminating-16... Even with the success of UE and Fortnite they're still a money losing business. They've probably been surviving off of cheap debt since 2009 but that has now ended. Multiply that by all the businesses in the Russell 3000 or whatever that have been doing exactly the same thing.