Epic laying off 16% of its workforce - Valve chose the winning strategy?

[Yasahi]

News just recently broke out that Epic is laying off about 900 people or around 16% of its entire workforce.

On these forums many have been touting over the years how Epic with all the free games will take market away from Valve and bring forth the demise of Steam. Seems like that's not really the case, eh?

Valve choosing not to join the "free games for thee" madness seems to be doing just fine while Epic is starting to cut costs.

[Crazy Tiger]

Where is Valve trying to stop Epic discussions? Cause such threads remain on the boards, unlocked and unmoderated, example being this thread.

Funnily enough quite some people, also from this thread, actually use multiple stores, including Epic. It seems the narrative fallout guy is pushing, isn't actually there.

[Doko]

yeah okay, dude is straight up trolling on purpose lol.

"deeply hurts Steam"
"please stop trying to manipulate ppl on Steam"
>Tries to gaslight everyone
>paid influencing doesn't exist
>can't figure out why ppl buy on Steam


"it border lines as counter productive to steam when you have steam users purposely trying to sabotage others who bring up questions about steam policy and how steam is allowing certain dangerous things to take place."

Omegalul. You really are trying to gaslight the feck out of people really hard.

Would love for a mod to just straight up ban this guy for abusing alt accounts to try gas lighting people with his nonfactual rhetoric

[Haruspex]

Doko の投稿を引用：

At this point I'm starting to think is a teenager, because no way can an adult be this nutty.

I don't know dude, I've met some pretty nutty adults. You're right though. Sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves who we are arguing with. Sometimes I'll get into a heated argument with someone online and I'll ask myself, "What if this person is eight years old?". I would feel pretty silly arguing so vehemently against an eight year old if we were face to face and in person.

[Max]

Nah it's just Ai thing when you can get decent stuff with less cost, and faster.

you will see a lot of lay off with programmers/artists in the future, the automation is the future.

[Tito Shivan]

Unicorn - Rainbow Unit の投稿を引用：

im pretty sure the paid influencer thing is made up anyway, nobody is paid to influence gaming reviews except the companies after sales.

So you telling Epic presented false evidence in a tribunal.

You may also want to read this:
https://sac.epicgames.com/en-US/overview

[Squirrel With Acorn]

Doko の投稿を引用：

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

That's called 'big picture'

Yeah 1k sounds like a lot. until you have to deal with just under 10k,.

I just checked Epic's general employee count (that stopped counting at around 2020) and it's 2,200, compared to MS's 221,000, and Apple's 164,000, that's still small as hell.

So them losing 830 within their own company itself out of 2,200 still feels like a chunk let go instantly (I know they are rehiring, but I don't see them filling that exact quota within say, 1-3 months time).

Epic stated they let go 16% of their employees, a total of 830, that makes it 5,187 employees, not 2,200.

[Squirrel With Acorn]

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

Unicorn - Rainbow Unit の投稿を引用：

im pretty sure the paid influencer thing is made up anyway, nobody is paid to influence gaming reviews except the companies after sales.

So you telling Epic presented false evidence in a tribunal.

You may also want to read this:
https://sac.epicgames.com/en-US/overview

at the same time people use that image you shared earlier wrong, because people use it to show "Epic pays people to use forums/reddit" type statements, when all that image showed is using their support a creator initiate along with using paid influencers to disrupt the growth, influencers being what they showed gaming streamers from Youtube/Twitch. Nothing about that showed anything about secretly having people on forums/reddit.

[Haruspex]

BlueCanine の投稿を引用：

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

So you telling Epic presented false evidence in a tribunal.

You may also want to read this:
https://sac.epicgames.com/en-US/overview

at the same time people use that image you shared earlier wrong, because people use it to show "Epic pays people to use forums/reddit" type statements, when all that image showed is using their support a creator initiate along with using paid influencers to disrupt the growth, influencers being what they showed gaming streamers from Youtube/Twitch. Nothing about that showed anything about secretly having people on forums/reddit.

Depends on how you define "influencer" then.

It's certainly not proof that Epic pays people to talk them up of the forums, but there are people who seem to make it their job to talk up Epic and spread FUD about Steam on various places online. Whether Epic is paying these users or not is a matter of contention, but the fact that they exist and the fact that Epic does in fact pay "influencers" to "disrupt Steam's organic traffic flow" has to at least raise an eyebrow.

[Tito Shivan]

BlueCanine の投稿を引用：

at the same time people use that image you shared earlier wrong, because people use it to show "Epic pays people to use forums/reddit" type statements.

This war isn't certainly short of cannonfodder in either side who will throw themselves into the fray for free.

OTOH Astroturfing and troll farms isn't anything new or alien to businesses. So I never fully discard the possibility. (An example I like to share is how the subject of 'Steam revenue share' started to be a discussion topic out of the blue just a little bit before the release of the Epic Store. And although correlation doesn't mean causation it's a correlation I keep finding interesting)

As a funny note. I've recently read how some very vocal defenders of Epic on Reddit seem to have vanished from the face of earth just in time with Epic's layoffs (Again correlation vs causation)

[lsdninja]

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

As a funny note. I've recently read how some very vocal defenders of Epic on Reddit seem to have vanished from the face of earth just in time with Epic's layoffs (Again correlation vs causation)

I'm not sure how far I'd read in to that. My understanding is that the US is still largely at-will when it comes to employment and it could just as easily be rank and file employees not looking to trash their workplace out of fear of being fired. It'll be interesting to see if any turn back up and what their attitudes are then.

[LazärheaD]

Epic put all their eggs in the Fortnite basket and abandoned Unreal, instead of a remaster or even a Black Mesa like remake. They deserve the fail.

[lsdninja]

LazärheaD の投稿を引用：

Epic put all their eggs in the Fortnite basket and abandoned Unreal, instead of a remaster or even a Black Mesa like remake. They deserve the fail.

If a games company deserves to fail simply because it abandons it's flagship franchise, does that mean Valve deserves to fail because it gave up on Half-Life 3?

[lx]

epic are using AI to do the job. they dont need those 900 people yawning all day long

[DiceDsx]

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

OTOH Astroturfing and troll farms isn't anything new or alien to businesses. So I never fully discard the possibility.

It doesn't help that for Tim Sweeney astroturfing is free speech.

[Doko]

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

BlueCanine の投稿を引用：

at the same time people use that image you shared earlier wrong, because people use it to show "Epic pays people to use forums/reddit" type statements.

This war isn't certainly short of cannonfodder in either side who will throw themselves into the fray for free.

OTOH Astroturfing and troll farms isn't anything new or alien to businesses. So I never fully discard the possibility. (An example I like to share is how the subject of 'Steam revenue share' started to be a discussion topic out of the blue just a little bit before the release of the Epic Store. And although correlation doesn't mean causation it's a correlation I keep finding interesting)

As a funny note. I've recently read how some very vocal defenders of Epic on Reddit seem to have vanished from the face of earth just in time with Epic's layoffs (Again correlation vs causation)

Yeah I always found that debate topic highly suspicious, because we've had nearly 20 years to talk about that topic, yet it only ever surfaced when EGS showed up, more specifically when Tim kept parroting that rev split, to a point where anyone on the side of EG always, always brings up the rev split, and I feel like it's done entirely in bad faith (because none of these people actually cared about the split in all these years, and only parrot because a CEo kept saying it).

There's a user called Einsburg who constantly finds any and every board or social media space that contains the word "Epic games" and basically debates to high dawn, and he only ever showed up the moment EGS showed up (Around that same time his Twitter account was created). He is definitely someone who can be considered a turfer, though many of us do not believe he is paid, but that he does this for free, though it is highly strange in that he argues 24/7 nearly everywhere.