Epic Games is laying off about 830 employees, divesting Bandcamp

It's so cool how they're shedding employees when their game store doesn't even have basic features like product reviews

I really don't understand how people still hang on to defending EGS. It's been shit since release, it's still missing basic features years later, and it's been found doing tons of shady shit.
I'm all for more competition in these spaces, because, you know, competition pushes the companies to one up each other and build compelling features. But EGS is just blatantly missing shit and is explicitly user-hostile by buying exclusivity to their vastly inferior platform. Steam hasn't had to react at all because they're still so far ahead, and Epic is just fucking trolling users by forcing them onto their platform without working cloud saves or even non-buggy installs.
The irony that they flag-wave "user choice" while doing this just totally baffles me.
- You don't have to love them but they're still the closest thing to any competition at all. You can complain but they're most likely to improve if they're profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down. I get the "buying exclusivity" complaint, but honestly it's fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.
- It's not missing features if you want a launcher to launch games and not to accumulate cards and hats.
- But they are great for indie developers. They've done a lot to serve the indie community by buying their games and distributing them as a free game. It gets indie studios out of the hole and into the public eye.
Maybe giving away games every Thursday is hurting them /s.
I hope that stays 100% of my library with them is all the free games. My bought games are on Steam.
Oh no! Having to check reviews elsewhere! The agony! How did people live before Steam having reviews on their platform? 😱
- Okay, so where do I go to leave a review on steam for a game that I've played on the epic store, smart ass?

fuck whoever originally owned bandcamp for selling it to epic. I have a really bad feeling about them selling it to a music licensing firm. I'm wondering if a lot of musicians are going to find a change in TOS that signs copyright over to songtradr or something.

Seriously, this fucking sucks. So likely to see all the good things about Bandcamp disappear.

whelp, grab those free thursday games while you still can

I am, but there's no need to call me names.
- sorry, that probably should have been “wench”, I’ll blame autocorrect
If they fold, will I even be able to access the games at all anymore?
- I doubt they’ll fold anytime soon, but they’ll probably cut back spending where they can, and the writing on the wall is already there based on the quality of the free games offered lately. Next week is like “Overcooked: Cannibal Edition”

that's not what the word means, they are selling it to Songtradr.
- Good thing they removed the e from trader, they must save so much money on branding.
I found this article which states
The company is also selling Bandcamp to a music licensing company called Songtradr...
I didn't know about their ownership in the first place.
- Yep, that sale was relatively new. Like, in the last year and a half.
Did that with Infinity Blade (Chair) as well because it was ‘competing for users’ apparently.

I stopped using Bandcamp when Epic bought them. Looks like they've sold it to Songtradr, who also bought 7digital (another music store that offered DRM-free FLAC files).

I've never heard of Songtradr. Does anyone have info on their history or ethics? I would love to have Bandcamp back as an artist-friendly, customer-friendly, relatively independent source of music, but I don't want to get my hopes up.

https://rocknerd.co.uk/2023/09/28/bandcamp-has-been-sold-to-songtradr/
They're making quite a lot of acquisitions, despite Bandcamp unionising earlier this year. It's one of the biggest licencing companies in the world, so it probably won't be great for the current services of Bandcamp when Songtradr wants to start monetising its users more meaningfully to make back the acquisition cost and break even.
Maybe good growth, maybe an attempt to gauge users as deep as possible before they just shutter the company. Could go either way.
I had no idea Bandcamp belonged to Epic Games ! To this day it's my favorite platform to buy music.

I could honestly care less about the video games, but the Bandcamp news is devastating. Is there anywhere else where you can buy lossless DRM-free music?

Gaming is worth FOUR times of movies. If you for some reason think mobile gaming is not gaming, it is still worth TWICE of Hollywood. You should care more about gaming. Hollywood is dying and AI will make it die faster. Gaming is the future of entertaiment.
- Buddy look, I have played video games my entire life, but video games are not going to ever be the only form of entertainment.
  Music has always, ALWAYS held the highest rung of entertainment and expression in my life. I could give less a shit about the hole Epic Games is digging for themselves.
  Without music, I legitimately have no reason to live. The creation and observation of music has given me motivation and purpose in life in ways that nothing else has ever done.

Shitty about Bandcamp. I hope it turns out ok.