3 ms·

I am not Tim Sweeney's biggest fan. I know he and his company have many detractors. Please read this comment with that in mind, because while I don't love them,

I am not Tim Sweeney's biggest fan. I know he and his company have many detractors. Please read this comment with that in mind, because while I don't love them, I also think that as layoff announcements go, this is good. No beating around the bush, explicitly NOT blaming AI, taking responsibility, taking care of those impacted. If you are gonna do it, this is as good as it can get. I think the reality is that Epic got big because of Fortnite but nothing lasts forever. They would have been better off building a war chest and pulling a Valve (though I'm sure they'd hate hearing it that way): going silent and making whatever they wanted for a while, and then trying to repeat the cycle, rebuilding the chest, and then going on. Video games are the exact opposite of Infinite Growth Forever. People get bored and move on. Meanwhile, Epic has many stable and valuable businesses - Unreal, the game store, etc. - which are perfectly capable of sustaining a sizable company. Just not one as sizable as Epic is. The best case for them is they figure that out, and manage to make a sustainable go of it doing that.

tombert 7mo ago
I broadly agree, though it does seem like Minecraft has some plot armor here. I think people are still buying and playing Minecraft a lot. I like Minecraft, I play it occasionally, but I guess it's a game that has much more staying power than average. I though my grievances with Epic are primarily because we never got Jazz Jackrabbit 3.
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo ago
  There are some grievances with minecraft recently Someone is suing mojang because they break EU/Swedish law (It was a youtube video worth watching) Minecraft bedrock is having some incredibly shitty tactics to move people towards their marketplace while community calling it bugrock I don't think that many people who play Minecraft really appreciate Mojang being bought by Microsoft. Many are oblivious to the fact sure but overall, community's sentiment is negative towards Microsoft buying Mojang imo.
  - tombert 7mo ago
    I don't own a Windows computer so I only play the Java Edition, which still shockingly gets regularly updates and is very mod-friendly even still. When MS bought Minecraft I assumed that they were going to drop support for the Java version but I was clearly wrong about that. Didn't know about the lawsuit though, I will give that a look.
    - bombcar 7mo ago
      Mojang and apparently someone at Microsoft who listens are smart enough to know that while most of the Minecraft revenue comes from bugrock, 99% of YouTube content comes from Java. They need that and the modding community to keep the game alive so that new players buy a copy on phone/console/etc.
    - Imustaskforhelp 7mo ago
      > When MS bought Minecraft I assumed that they were going to drop support for the Java version but I was clearly wrong about that Oh they sure wish that but the community loves java and for a good reason actually but their first step towards this was migrating mojang accounts into microsoft accounts as previously bedrock had microsoft accounts iirc and java had mojang accounts and microsoft accounts both but they have now blocked mojang accounts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_UF_4gZclI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_UF_4gZclI (Mojang screwed us, now we're suing them)
    - debugnik 7mo ago
      > which still shockingly gets regularly updates AFAIK Java Edition is still the actual development branch. Mojang develops new updates for Java Edition first, then lets another team port them to Bedrock.
  - shakna 7mo ago
    I assume you're referring to Kian Brose v. Mojang? [0] A class action, where the EULA was updated without full consent being sought correctly. [0] https://tribune.com.pk/story/2567759/minecraft-faces-a-class-action-storm-small-creator-vs-mojang-and-microsoft https://tribune.com.pk/story/2567759/minecraft-faces-a-class...
- acheron 7mo ago
  Time for them to pivot to their strength: ZZT
  - bigfishrunning 7mo ago
    I haven't thought about ZZT for many many years, and didn't realize it was a Tim Sweeney joint. Thank you very much for the intense hit of nostalgia!
- drcongo 7mo ago
  My kids have a PS5 and a Switch 2 and really only use either of them for Minecraft.
- ecshafer 7mo ago
  Minecraft is kind of a perfect storm for longevity. It is a sandbox game, that has a lot of depth. But its also extremely easy to jump into casually (unlike idk Kenshi or Rimworld). Its also family friendly but not in a way that makes it off putting to adults so anyone 5-500 could play it. Its also not so expensive that people refrain from rebuying it on different platforms.
influx 7mo ago
Aren't they trying to do a Valve with their store?
zzzoom 7mo ago
They did try to pull a Valve and use their successful game to fund a game store that prints money.
jmyeet 7mo ago
You see this trap in tech companies as well as game studios. I call it "acting like Google before you're Google". And in fact virtually nobody becomes Google. Google has been a money printing machine for 20+ years almost unparalleled in human history. That's allowed Google to write bespoke software for everything, which has been useful because almost nobody has Google's problems. It's also allowed Google to contribute a bunch to open source and engage in vanity projects. They can afford it. Then you see the likes of Twitter a decade or more ago who dedicated possibly hundreds of engineers to make Cassandra work. That's doing Google shit. But they aren't Google. And eventually those chickens come home to roost. Games are like any content business where the owners and leadership are trying to create a formula that can be repeated infinitely. Content business actually hate the creative people who make their content because creativity doesn't scale. This is why movie studios churn out sequels and superhero movies. It's a formula. Games eventually fall out of favor as genres get stale and new genres get created. Minecraft is an almost unique exception to this. There's a reason it sold for ~$2 billion. It's still popular. It's crazy. But that kind of example is so incredibly rare you should assume it's never going to happen. The hubris at Epic was that they could challenge the Apple and Google app store monopolies. They were wrong. And they wasted an extraordinary amount of time, money and opportunity chasing that. That was a strategic mistake, even though I agree with their philosophical position. I'm reminded of id software. John Carmack was legendary for years. Wolfenstein was groundbreaking. So was Doom then Quake. But eventually (IMHO) id games ceased to be games but because tech demos to sell engine licenses before ultimately being acquired and swallowed. I feel like Epic is the same with the Unreal Engine. Fortnite is a success while it's popular and people buy cosmetics but when that popularity wanes, they have a huge revenue problem.
- Cpoll 7mo ago
  > Then you see the likes of Twitter a decade or more ago who dedicated possibly hundreds of engineers to make Cassandra work. That's doing Google shit. But they aren't Google. And eventually those chickens come home to roost. Isn't it the other way around? Using off-the-shelf solutions like Cassandra didn't work, so they had to resort to doing actual Google shit, a custom solution, to meet their needs.
deepthaw 7mo ago
At least they're doing severance, health insurance, etc. Nowadays if I got laid off at a company I'd expect to just find that my key didn't work and a "check's in the mail" letter to the wrong address.
darkteflon 7mo ago
It’s a reasonable take, but I do think there is a wrinkle: Tim is an AI proponent, but also understands the current politics of it. Personally, I doubt that AI has nothing to do with this: Tim just knows not to admit it. Re Tim the man: I have no opinion on him, but I follow gaming news closely and know that he is polarising. However, I saw this recently in PC Gamer and thought it was admirable: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-ceo-and-billionaire-tim-sweeney-has-been-using-some-of-his-cash-to-buy-up-50-000-acres-of-forest-so-it-cant-be-flattened/ https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-ceo-and-billion...
- ronsor 7mo ago
  Companies fire people all the time. Layoffs are regular. To the extent that AI has much to do with layoffs in the past few years, it's mostly AI being used as an excuse, rather than it being the true reason.
  - darkteflon 7mo ago
    I understand that that’s generally the case; I’m saying that in this specific instance, there’s reason to suspect that it is actually a contributing factor - one of many.
mattbrewsbytes 7mo ago
> Epic has many stable and valuable businesses I don't think their approach is getting to stable, valuable businesses and keeping them that way. Their company name is Epic, not Mediocre BlueChipGameCo. I think their approach has been to make big investments into things, almost like Amazon's earlier approach where they would re-invest everything into the business and that might be where Epic now has to react to the market slowing for them and pull back. I have to imagine AI is having an impact but not in the way people jump to about them using AI. How many people out there have ideas for games and can't execute them because they don't know the tech? How many people in the software industry were drawn to computing because of gaming? If they built AI into Unreal Engine so that someone could approach it from a Game Producer/Designer role and not have to get deep into C++ programming or shaders and art assets, and produce games, games that go to the Epic Game Store and they take a cut? That would move the market in a way that would be more fitting for their company name.
HerbManic 7mo ago
Pool the money then make the dream game. Announce Unreal Engine 6 with Jazz the Jackrabbit 3!
- ReptileMan 7mo ago
  Even better - give Klei Entertainment right to develop a Jazz game. Mark of the ninja showed they have the perfect 2d engine.
2001zhaozhao 7mo ago
> pulling a Valve > Video games are the exact opposite of Infinite Growth Forever. People get bored and move on. To me, Epic Games were clearly trying to "pull a Valve" and capture the platform magic that allows Valve and other platforms like Roblox to be sustainably profitable. Obviously they have their own game store, but they also have a Fortnite Creative / UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) platform where people can create minigames inside Fortnite that work similarly to Roblox. They even had the right idea for a while - refusing in-app transactions in their Fortnite Creative platform to encourage actually fun games rather than greedy games that prey on players. Unfortunately they had to walk back that system recently, which I now assume to be for the same financial reason as this new layoff. I think their idea didn't work for two reasons. First, they locked down the UEFN platform too hard, leaving not a lot of options for developers to modify core gameplay features like movement and player controller. Devs like me who wanted more control over the player character and game mechanics were really severely restricted - if it was intentional, it was a bad call, and if it was unintentional then it shows that UEFN was too half-baked technically when they launched it. Second, Fortnite already had the reputation of being "just that Battle Royale game", so people didn't innovate too far beyond the game's base gameplay, rather than Roblox which was more like a true game engine / platform where every genre was possible. This kind of doomed their plan to compete head-to-head with Roblox from the start.
- johnnyanmac 7mo ago
  Yeah, UEFN when you dig past the surface is rough. I think it's a mix of both your reasons. UEFN seems to be a spinoff of their Fortnite Creator workshop while making use of their new Verse scripting. If this was originally only meant to mod Fortnite, I can see why it's so half baked as a Roblox competitor. You really are pulling teeth if you want to make anything other than "Fortnite but X".
- big-and-small 7mo ago
  > To me, Epic Games were clearly trying to "pull a Valve" and capture the platform magic that allows Valve and other platforms like Roblox to be sustainably profitable. Valve have headcount of under 400 people. Obviously they have contractors working creating assets for CS / Data / etc, but company itself is swift and agile. Epic was around 1000 people at Fortnite release then grown to over 4000.
Wowfunhappy 7mo ago
> They would have been better off building a war chest and pulling a Valve (though I'm sure they'd hate hearing it that way) Isn't that exactly what they were trying to do with the Epic Game Store? Steam is the thing that has made Valve successful. They were great as a game company, but as you said, the games don't last. Steam does, and I don't think Valve would be that successful in a business sense without it.
oliyoung 7mo ago
> better off building a war chest and pulling a Valve They tried, it's called the Epic Game Store

tombert 7mo ago

I broadly agree, though it does seem like Minecraft has some plot armor here. I think people are still buying and playing Minecraft a lot. I like Minecraft, I play it occasionally, but I guess it's a game that has much more staying power than average. I though my grievances with Epic are primarily because we never got Jazz Jackrabbit 3.

Imustaskforhelp 7mo ago
There are some grievances with minecraft recently Someone is suing mojang because they break EU/Swedish law (It was a youtube video worth watching) Minecraft bedrock is having some incredibly shitty tactics to move people towards their marketplace while community calling it bugrock I don't think that many people who play Minecraft really appreciate Mojang being bought by Microsoft. Many are oblivious to the fact sure but overall, community's sentiment is negative towards Microsoft buying Mojang imo.
- tombert 7mo ago
  I don't own a Windows computer so I only play the Java Edition, which still shockingly gets regularly updates and is very mod-friendly even still. When MS bought Minecraft I assumed that they were going to drop support for the Java version but I was clearly wrong about that. Didn't know about the lawsuit though, I will give that a look.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    Mojang and apparently someone at Microsoft who listens are smart enough to know that while most of the Minecraft revenue comes from bugrock, 99% of YouTube content comes from Java. They need that and the modding community to keep the game alive so that new players buy a copy on phone/console/etc.
  - Imustaskforhelp 7mo ago
    > When MS bought Minecraft I assumed that they were going to drop support for the Java version but I was clearly wrong about that Oh they sure wish that but the community loves java and for a good reason actually but their first step towards this was migrating mojang accounts into microsoft accounts as previously bedrock had microsoft accounts iirc and java had mojang accounts and microsoft accounts both but they have now blocked mojang accounts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_UF_4gZclI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_UF_4gZclI (Mojang screwed us, now we're suing them)
  - debugnik 7mo ago
    > which still shockingly gets regularly updates AFAIK Java Edition is still the actual development branch. Mojang develops new updates for Java Edition first, then lets another team port them to Bedrock.
- shakna 7mo ago
  I assume you're referring to Kian Brose v. Mojang? [0] A class action, where the EULA was updated without full consent being sought correctly. [0] https://tribune.com.pk/story/2567759/minecraft-faces-a-class-action-storm-small-creator-vs-mojang-and-microsoft https://tribune.com.pk/story/2567759/minecraft-faces-a-class...
acheron 7mo ago
Time for them to pivot to their strength: ZZT
- bigfishrunning 7mo ago
  I haven't thought about ZZT for many many years, and didn't realize it was a Tim Sweeney joint. Thank you very much for the intense hit of nostalgia!
drcongo 7mo ago
My kids have a PS5 and a Switch 2 and really only use either of them for Minecraft.
ecshafer 7mo ago
Minecraft is kind of a perfect storm for longevity. It is a sandbox game, that has a lot of depth. But its also extremely easy to jump into casually (unlike idk Kenshi or Rimworld). Its also family friendly but not in a way that makes it off putting to adults so anyone 5-500 could play it. Its also not so expensive that people refrain from rebuying it on different platforms.

influx 7mo ago

Aren't they trying to do a Valve with their store?

zzzoom 7mo ago

They did try to pull a Valve and use their successful game to fund a game store that prints money.

jmyeet 7mo ago

You see this trap in tech companies as well as game studios. I call it "acting like Google before you're Google". And in fact virtually nobody becomes Google. Google has been a money printing machine for 20+ years almost unparalleled in human history. That's allowed Google to write bespoke software for everything, which has been useful because almost nobody has Google's problems. It's also allowed Google to contribute a bunch to open source and engage in vanity projects. They can afford it. Then you see the likes of Twitter a decade or more ago who dedicated possibly hundreds of engineers to make Cassandra work. That's doing Google shit. But they aren't Google. And eventually those chickens come home to roost. Games are like any content business where the owners and leadership are trying to create a formula that can be repeated infinitely. Content business actually hate the creative people who make their content because creativity doesn't scale. This is why movie studios churn out sequels and superhero movies. It's a formula. Games eventually fall out of favor as genres get stale and new genres get created. Minecraft is an almost unique exception to this. There's a reason it sold for ~$2 billion. It's still popular. It's crazy. But that kind of example is so incredibly rare you should assume it's never going to happen. The hubris at Epic was that they could challenge the Apple and Google app store monopolies. They were wrong. And they wasted an extraordinary amount of time, money and opportunity chasing that. That was a strategic mistake, even though I agree with their philosophical position. I'm reminded of id software. John Carmack was legendary for years. Wolfenstein was groundbreaking. So was Doom then Quake. But eventually (IMHO) id games ceased to be games but because tech demos to sell engine licenses before ultimately being acquired and swallowed. I feel like Epic is the same with the Unreal Engine. Fortnite is a success while it's popular and people buy cosmetics but when that popularity wanes, they have a huge revenue problem.

Cpoll 7mo ago
> Then you see the likes of Twitter a decade or more ago who dedicated possibly hundreds of engineers to make Cassandra work. That's doing Google shit. But they aren't Google. And eventually those chickens come home to roost. Isn't it the other way around? Using off-the-shelf solutions like Cassandra didn't work, so they had to resort to doing actual Google shit, a custom solution, to meet their needs.

deepthaw 7mo ago

At least they're doing severance, health insurance, etc. Nowadays if I got laid off at a company I'd expect to just find that my key didn't work and a "check's in the mail" letter to the wrong address.

darkteflon 7mo ago

It’s a reasonable take, but I do think there is a wrinkle: Tim is an AI proponent, but also understands the current politics of it. Personally, I doubt that AI has nothing to do with this: Tim just knows not to admit it. Re Tim the man: I have no opinion on him, but I follow gaming news closely and know that he is polarising. However, I saw this recently in PC Gamer and thought it was admirable: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-ceo-and-billionaire-tim-sweeney-has-been-using-some-of-his-cash-to-buy-up-50-000-acres-of-forest-so-it-cant-be-flattened/ https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-ceo-and-billion...

ronsor 7mo ago
Companies fire people all the time. Layoffs are regular. To the extent that AI has much to do with layoffs in the past few years, it's mostly AI being used as an excuse, rather than it being the true reason.
- darkteflon 7mo ago
  I understand that that’s generally the case; I’m saying that in this specific instance, there’s reason to suspect that it is actually a contributing factor - one of many.

mattbrewsbytes 7mo ago

> Epic has many stable and valuable businesses I don't think their approach is getting to stable, valuable businesses and keeping them that way. Their company name is Epic, not Mediocre BlueChipGameCo. I think their approach has been to make big investments into things, almost like Amazon's earlier approach where they would re-invest everything into the business and that might be where Epic now has to react to the market slowing for them and pull back. I have to imagine AI is having an impact but not in the way people jump to about them using AI. How many people out there have ideas for games and can't execute them because they don't know the tech? How many people in the software industry were drawn to computing because of gaming? If they built AI into Unreal Engine so that someone could approach it from a Game Producer/Designer role and not have to get deep into C++ programming or shaders and art assets, and produce games, games that go to the Epic Game Store and they take a cut? That would move the market in a way that would be more fitting for their company name.

HerbManic 7mo ago

Pool the money then make the dream game. Announce Unreal Engine 6 with Jazz the Jackrabbit 3!

ReptileMan 7mo ago
Even better - give Klei Entertainment right to develop a Jazz game. Mark of the ninja showed they have the perfect 2d engine.

2001zhaozhao 7mo ago

> pulling a Valve > Video games are the exact opposite of Infinite Growth Forever. People get bored and move on. To me, Epic Games were clearly trying to "pull a Valve" and capture the platform magic that allows Valve and other platforms like Roblox to be sustainably profitable. Obviously they have their own game store, but they also have a Fortnite Creative / UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) platform where people can create minigames inside Fortnite that work similarly to Roblox. They even had the right idea for a while - refusing in-app transactions in their Fortnite Creative platform to encourage actually fun games rather than greedy games that prey on players. Unfortunately they had to walk back that system recently, which I now assume to be for the same financial reason as this new layoff. I think their idea didn't work for two reasons. First, they locked down the UEFN platform too hard, leaving not a lot of options for developers to modify core gameplay features like movement and player controller. Devs like me who wanted more control over the player character and game mechanics were really severely restricted - if it was intentional, it was a bad call, and if it was unintentional then it shows that UEFN was too half-baked technically when they launched it. Second, Fortnite already had the reputation of being "just that Battle Royale game", so people didn't innovate too far beyond the game's base gameplay, rather than Roblox which was more like a true game engine / platform where every genre was possible. This kind of doomed their plan to compete head-to-head with Roblox from the start.

johnnyanmac 7mo ago
Yeah, UEFN when you dig past the surface is rough. I think it's a mix of both your reasons. UEFN seems to be a spinoff of their Fortnite Creator workshop while making use of their new Verse scripting. If this was originally only meant to mod Fortnite, I can see why it's so half baked as a Roblox competitor. You really are pulling teeth if you want to make anything other than "Fortnite but X".
big-and-small 7mo ago
> To me, Epic Games were clearly trying to "pull a Valve" and capture the platform magic that allows Valve and other platforms like Roblox to be sustainably profitable. Valve have headcount of under 400 people. Obviously they have contractors working creating assets for CS / Data / etc, but company itself is swift and agile. Epic was around 1000 people at Fortnite release then grown to over 4000.

Wowfunhappy 7mo ago

> They would have been better off building a war chest and pulling a Valve (though I'm sure they'd hate hearing it that way) Isn't that exactly what they were trying to do with the Epic Game Store? Steam is the thing that has made Valve successful. They were great as a game company, but as you said, the games don't last. Steam does, and I don't think Valve would be that successful in a business sense without it.

oliyoung 7mo ago

> better off building a war chest and pulling a Valve They tried, it's called the Epic Game Store