Epic Games Lays Off 16% of Workforce and Sells Off Bandcamp and Most of SuperAwesome | MMORPG.com

System · September 2023

Epic Games Lays Off 16% of Workforce and Sells Off Bandcamp and Most of SuperAwesome | MMORPG.com

Epic Games is the latest company making major layoffs, with about 830 employees, or 16% of the company's employees, affected. Another 250 employees will leave via sales of several Epic-owned companies.

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Tiller · September 2023

Bandcamp is a great place to get really obscure House music for my DJ sets, so hopefully it never dies. I know artists enjoy how revenue share works and it allows fans to essentially tip artists for their work beyond their ask. It popular, but not as widely used or known as it should be.

Kyleran · September 2023

I guess Steam is winning the war.

Never heard of the two companies they sold off.

Aeander · September 2023

They also shut down the entirety of the studio behind Fall Guys.

Pher0cious · September 2023

Whatever man. As long as I get to keep all the free games I claimed win win.

ValdemarJ · September 2023

Tiller said:

Bandcamp is a great place to get really obscure House music for my DJ sets, so hopefully it never dies. I know artists enjoy how revenue share works and it allows fans to essentially tip artists for their work beyond their ask. It popular, but not as widely used or known as it should be.

There is so much good music on Bandcamp. I was really disappointed when I saw that Epic bought it as a boost to their idiotic metaverse fantasy. I hope the new owners treat it with care.

A lot of my favorite indie artists are on Bandcamp and it's how I send extra money their way. Generally, I buy the album on Apple Music, then if I really love the album or artist, I'll buy the DRM free flac/mp3 album to archive.

Alverant · September 2023

I love Bandcamp and I hope it continues. Even if they have to end Bandcamp Fridays to generate revenue, I'll still shop there. I bought dozens of albums there that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

Kyleran · September 2023

Alverant said:

I love Bandcamp and I hope it continues. Even if they have to end Bandcamp Fridays to generate revenue, I'll still shop there. I bought dozens of albums there that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

People still buy music? Who knew?

ValdemarJ · September 2023

For those interested, Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr (as mentioned in the article).

Link to a Hacker News discussion about the Bandcamp acquisition with a few more bits of info. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37695035

In that discussion is a link to a github repo with a script that will download your Bandcamp library.

https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader

Here are instructions, and an example, of how to get this working on Windows.

https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21

Epic is a privately owned company; reminding us that businesses, small or large, public or private, don't give a shit about you the employee.

Alverant · September 2023

Kyleran said:

Alverant said:

I love Bandcamp and I hope it continues. Even if they have to end Bandcamp Fridays to generate revenue, I'll still shop there. I bought dozens of albums there that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

People still buy music? Who knew?

Of course, how do you think new music gets made?

Scot · September 2023

Kyleran said:

Alverant said:

I love Bandcamp and I hope it continues. Even if they have to end Bandcamp Fridays to generate revenue, I'll still shop there. I bought dozens of albums there that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

People still buy music? Who knew?

Look at what Valdemar said as well, a whole world of music out there we have no idea about!

Ryukan · September 2023

I have a lot of music I have purchased off Bandcamp, it's the only placer I have found to get music from the more obscure musicians that are still excellent. I suppose I better download all that music off Bandcamp just in case it goes under one day.

Sovrath · September 2023

ValdemarJ said:

Epic is a privately owned company; reminding us that businesses, small or large, public or private, don't give a shit about you the employee.

hmmm that's a bit vitriolic.

Businesses need to do what they need to do in order to stay in business and to deliver a profit to "whomever."

In this case, sure, they are private. But they are giving their employees (if I read that correctly) 6 months severance. That's not bad considering a lot of companies give a month.

At least they care enough to give their laid off employees some sort of proper cushion. So sure, I be they'd prefer their job but at least they aren't being given "the bum's rush."

Neoyoshi · September 2023

Hopefully Bandcamp will be alright. But i'm not surprised at all by this with Epic.

I hope those those lost their jobs are picked up by Valve.

Scot · September 2023

Sovrath said:

ValdemarJ said:

Epic is a privately owned company; reminding us that businesses, small or large, public or private, don't give a shit about you the employee.

hmmm that's a bit vitriolic.

Businesses need to do what they need to do in order to stay in business and to deliver a profit to "whomever."

In this case, sure, they are private. But they are giving their employees (if I read that correctly) 6 months severance. That's not bad considering a lot of companies give a month.

At least they care enough to give their laid off employees some sort of proper cushion. So sure, I be they'd prefer their job but at least they aren't being given "the bum's rush."

I hope they land on their feet, but it is not an employers responsibility to give anyone a job for life. However, I do extend that to directors who seem to have a 'directors job' for life and can go anywhere, even to businesses they have no experience of. I do think there should be limits to how golden their handshake is.

As we are not supposed to do pollical posts this is my last one here.

Sovrath · September 2023

Scot said:

Sovrath said:

ValdemarJ said:

Epic is a privately owned company; reminding us that businesses, small or large, public or private, don't give a shit about you the employee.

hmmm that's a bit vitriolic.

Businesses need to do what they need to do in order to stay in business and to deliver a profit to "whomever."

In this case, sure, they are private. But they are giving their employees (if I read that correctly) 6 months severance. That's not bad considering a lot of companies give a month.

At least they care enough to give their laid off employees some sort of proper cushion. So sure, I be they'd prefer their job but at least they aren't being given "the bum's rush."

I hope they land on their feet, but it is not an employers responsibility to give anyone a job for life. However, I do extend that to directors who seem to have a 'directors job' for life and can go anywhere, even to businesses they have no experience of. I do think there should be limits to how golden their handshake is.

I view employment like a relationship. They work for as long as they work. Sometimes it's awesome and sometimes "not so much."

I just changed jobs because my previous company started doing stupid things that affected the culture. Additionally, my job kept morphing into a very dull finance job.

I thought I'd retire with them as I had spent over 12 years there.

But when another company reached out to me I realized it was a better job, in a better area (in the city as opposed to a boring suburb) that paid a lot more money.

So "new relationship."

Of course, for these people, it all depends on whether they can find a new job where they live. If there are many companies that might hire them they will probably be ok. If not then that's where it becomes difficult.

olepi · September 2023

Scot said:

Sovrath said:

ValdemarJ said:

Epic is a privately owned company; reminding us that businesses, small or large, public or private, don't give a shit about you the employee.

hmmm that's a bit vitriolic.

Businesses need to do what they need to do in order to stay in business and to deliver a profit to "whomever."

In this case, sure, they are private. But they are giving their employees (if I read that correctly) 6 months severance. That's not bad considering a lot of companies give a month.

At least they care enough to give their laid off employees some sort of proper cushion. So sure, I be they'd prefer their job but at least they aren't being given "the bum's rush."

I hope they land on their feet, but it is not an employers responsibility to give anyone a job for life. However, I do extend that to directors who seem to have a 'directors job' for life and can go anywhere, even to businesses they have no experience of. I do think there should be limits to how golden their handshake is.

My favorite story of how top executives can be put into jobs they have no idea about is: in 1981 I was working for a startup that had bought CALMA. CALMA was the premier chip CAD company and made almost all the workstations used to draw and create IC's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calma

("A typical GDSII system in 1980 would have a 300mb disk, 1/2 mb of memory, using a 16bit DG minicomputer and up to 4 screens. This cost over $500,000 in 1980 dollars." I was a manager at the time and bought these. The 300mb disk was the size of a washing machine and cost $15,000. Translate that into what you have in your PC today.)

Then General Electric bought us and they sent a new executive from their Small Steam Turbine Division to be our new CEO and President. He knew nothing about IC's. "A business is just a business" said the GE top execs.

CALMA lasted a few more years, but then went under.

[Deleted User] · September 2023

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Tiller · September 2023

Kyleran said:

Alverant said:

I love Bandcamp and I hope it continues. Even if they have to end Bandcamp Fridays to generate revenue, I'll still shop there. I bought dozens of albums there that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

People still buy music? Who knew?

Most DJs do, even though we have the capability to actually stream audio to our decks and players from places like Beatport, Beatsource, Soundcloud, Amazon ect, the sound is usually compressed and quality isn't always as good as we like, so buying uncompressed files is preferred, though not mandatory. Plus you support the artists.

I've have done entire sets connected to Soundcloud Go+ though. I also think audiophiles also prefer lossless audio more, which you can't currently stream on Spotify, though it's coming.

slowz2secret · September 2023

steam still the king

Tiller · September 2023

slowz2secret said:

steam still the king

Of course, Steam isn't just a games platform it's a community which Epic games failed to provide.

jaymesbond · September 2023

Sovrath said:

ValdemarJ said:

Epic is a privately owned company; reminding us that businesses, small or large, public or private, don't give a shit about you the employee.

hmmm that's a bit vitriolic.

Businesses need to do what they need to do in order to stay in business and to deliver a profit to "whomever."

In this case, sure, they are private. But they are giving their employees (if I read that correctly) 6 months severance. That's not bad considering a lot of companies give a month.

At least they care enough to give their laid off employees some sort of proper cushion. So sure, I be they'd prefer their job but at least they aren't being given "the bum's rush."

Was that 6 months severance pay contractually obligated? If it is as you said that businesses need to do whatever to deliver a profit, why give the employees any severance pay? Why give the employees anything beyond what they're legally or contractually obligated to do?

Businesses don't give a shit about employees and they don't give a shit about you, the customer.

I would argue that businesses don't always do what's best for themselves or most profitable, just what's easiest at the expense of everyone else. "Profit" is just the cover.

Scot · September 2023

olepi said:

Scot said:

Sovrath said:

ValdemarJ said:

Epic is a privately owned company; reminding us that businesses, small or large, public or private, don't give a shit about you the employee.

hmmm that's a bit vitriolic.

Businesses need to do what they need to do in order to stay in business and to deliver a profit to "whomever."

In this case, sure, they are private. But they are giving their employees (if I read that correctly) 6 months severance. That's not bad considering a lot of companies give a month.

At least they care enough to give their laid off employees some sort of proper cushion. So sure, I be they'd prefer their job but at least they aren't being given "the bum's rush."

I hope they land on their feet, but it is not an employers responsibility to give anyone a job for life. However, I do extend that to directors who seem to have a 'directors job' for life and can go anywhere, even to businesses they have no experience of. I do think there should be limits to how golden their handshake is.

My favorite story of how top executives can be put into jobs they have no idea about is: in 1981 I was working for a startup that had bought CALMA. CALMA was the premier chip CAD company and made almost all the workstations used to draw and create IC's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calma

("A typical GDSII system in 1980 would have a 300mb disk, 1/2 mb of memory, using a 16bit DG minicomputer and up to 4 screens. This cost over $500,000 in 1980 dollars." I was a manager at the time and bought these. The 300mb disk was the size of a washing machine and cost $15,000. Translate that into what you have in your PC today.)

Then General Electric bought us and they sent a new executive from their Small Steam Turbine Division to be our new CEO and President. He knew nothing about IC's. "A business is just a business" said the GE top execs.

CALMA lasted a few more years, but then went under.

Electronic Arts former CEO had previous jobs as VP of Häagen-Dazs and a huge chemical company. That said only one director of the 7(?) they have had any gaming background when I last looked.

They are often brought in because they have demonstrated competency at new business practices that the company wants. That guy crowed about making every developer an accountant (also saying we will make games your mum could play), my guess is he was brought in for that.

ChildoftheShadows · September 2023

Kyleran said:

I guess Steam is winning the war.

Never heard of the two companies they sold off.

They don’t have anything to do with EGS, more like production or maybe a little game development.

It’s always weird seeing perspectives from non game devs because Steam never even entered my mind at all when reading this news.

rosedie99 · September 2023

Alverant said:

Kyleran said:

Alverant said:

I love Bandcamp and I hope it continues. Even if they have to end Bandcamp Fridays to generate revenue, I'll still shop there. I bought dozens of albums there that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

People still buy music? Who knew?

Of course, how do you think new music gets made?

concerts..?

Sovrath · October 2023

jaymesbond said:

Was that 6 months severance pay contractually obligated? If it is as you said that businesses need to do whatever to deliver a profit, why give the employees any severance pay? Why give the employees anything beyond what they're legally or contractually obligated to do?

Businesses don't give a shit about employees and they don't give a shit about you, the customer.

I would argue that businesses don't always do what's best for themselves or most profitable, just what's easiest at the expense of everyone else. "Profit" is just the cover.

They gave it to their employees because they wanted their employees to have a cushion? As I've said, I've not heard of many companies giving 6 months. I have heard of some companies giving a week per year the employee worked.

I don't know what is standard at Epic. I do know that severance is not mandated by law.

I do know that 6 months is better than 2 weeks. As someone who has been laid off in the past and NOT gotten 6 months I'd like 6 months.

No, companies are not your best friend But Neither do you owe them anything either. You can literally quit whenever you want and NOT give them 2 weeks notice.

However, companies that do give severance and especially good severance do consider the well being of those employees. Or you can be cynical and say they do this because they want to be considered a good employer. Who cares? As long as the employee is taken care of that is the thing that matters.

So regardless if they care or not they took care of their employees and didn't leave them with a month severance. Or they could have given a month and then a week per year. yeah, 6 months is sounding pretty good if you've only worked there a few years. Who knows, maybe they gave lifers more?

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Epic Games Lays Off 16% of Workforce and Sells Off Bandcamp and Most of SuperAwesome | MMORPG.com

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV