Epic Games laying off staff

Sorry to hear of your brother getting laid off - thats a large cut to the workforce and certainly another signal of how various aspects of the software/tech industry are viewing times ahead.

Wage inflation across the dev/engineering/security/cs sector has been incredible the last few years - and realisation over the last year or so is that the rises were not sustainable in the face of changing economic outlook. The initial push to WFH and then the realisation that a lot of these roles can be effectively full time WFH really drove this wage inflation. A loosely example.... a full stack engineer previously earning £40k outside of Swansea on employer site could then earn £75k remotely working for a London based company. I've been on the pointy end of this with a few companies losing talent and not being able to compete salary wise.... or trying to compete, struggling and then cutting jobs. Its been hard.
 
hdpcgamer said:
If they can still afford to give away 1-2 games full priced games every week then why are they laying off staff?
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Many of the free games they give way are Unreal Engine games, probably makes zero impact on their pockets putting them out for free.

Epic does pay for exclusives to keep them off Steam for 12 months. Final Fantasy 7 Remake being one of them but that's also an Unreal Engine game.
 
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Thanks for the kind comments.

I am sure he will be fine, they are giving him 6 months base salary pay, and he does have income protection insurance.

But yes a kick in the teeth.

As to some of the comments tech company to tech company etc. I have a theory (only a theory mind you) that this was planned a while ago. The company my brother works for was originally the company that developed that "Fall Guys" game on playstation and PC, it says Mediatonic but they must have rebranded because that wasn't the name at the time, I wana say Playfusion??? Then Epic Games bought them out, a couple of years ago after that Fall Guys game did commercially quite well given they were a small (ish) developer.

I am not sure if it was accidental or a part of a plan keep in mind we seem to be run by capitalism now.
 
rumple9 said:
They will be using AI to make AAA games soon
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This is closer to reality than you think. Nvidia's Bryan whatshisface the other day stated that rendering a while game in a fully neural network is basically the goal and CDPR's lead dev stated that this is a worry, but creative directions and art style will still need that human touch so those roles should still always be there I guess.
 
malachi said:
Many of the free games they give way are Unreal Engine games, probably makes zero impact on their pockets putting them out for free.

Epic does pay for exclusives to keep them off Steam for 12 months. Final Fantasy 7 Remake being one of them but that's also an Unreal Engine game.
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Not entirely true, the weekly givaways have included high profile games such as GTA 5, Death Stranding, Mortal Shell, Remnant: From the Ashes, Borderlands 3, Daemon X Machina and much more.
 
BUDFORCE said:
Thanks for the kind comments.

I am sure he will be fine, they are giving him 6 months base salary pay, and he does have income protection insurance.

But yes a kick in the teeth.

As to some of the comments tech company to tech company etc. I have a theory (only a theory mind you) that this was planned a while ago. The company my brother works for was originally the company that developed that "Fall Guys" game on playstation and PC, it says Mediatonic but they must have rebranded because that wasn't the name at the time, I wana say Playfusion??? Then Epic Games bought them out, a couple of years ago after that Fall Guys game did commercially quite well given they were a small (ish) developer.

I am not sure if it was accidental or a part of a plan keep in mind we seem to be run by capitalism now.
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Quartz said:
Rebellion Games are recruiting.
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I saw Sumo Digital are hiring with dozens of vacancies across the UK and some in Europe and the US too.
 
Damn, never good to hear being made redundant... At the same time 6 months base salary payout with income protection insurance is enough to buy a new house and start renting it out and live off the rent :D

I wish him good luck. Pretty sure he'll come out on top though with that incredible redundancy package
 
Incredibly sad to see what Epic have done to Bandcamp. Seemingly only bought as a pawn in their war with Apple and now discarded without second thought.
 
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jeffk said:
Incredibly sad to see what Epic have done to Bandcamp. Seemingly only bought as a pawn in their war with Apple and now discarded without second thought.
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That's capitalism for you.

I was one of six programmers in a small company that was bought out by a bigger fish.

We were all gone within a year apart from the MD, who had obviously cut himself a deal when he sold up.
 
Kelt said:
That's capitalism for you.

I was one of six programmers in a small company that was bought out by a bigger fish.

We were all gone within a year apart from the MD, who had obviously cut himself a deal when he sold up.
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Honestly why ganes are such a state these days, probably most things.

These companies just float on investments, rather than make their money from what they produce.

One of the companies my brother worked for, literally just sold the concept of a game, investors get interested, and the company gains share price, the thing starts snowballing and people make money, and the end result is almost a moot point after that point, sure if it sells well it's a bonus.

The company he's getting laid off from made that Fall Guys came, which I think for the size of the developer (before Epic Games) was a pretty big thing, and I'm guessing made them a lot of money, I guess the bigger fish saw the potential before it ever became a threat.

As you say, capitalism.
 
arknor said:
most companies are cutting away the fat.
I bet the majority of them can be replaced with "AI" aka a script
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GitHub copilot has been rolled out where I work and it’s surprisingly good.

Andy__C said:
Sorry to hear of your brother getting laid off - thats a large cut to the workforce and certainly another signal of how various aspects of the software/tech industry are viewing times ahead.

Wage inflation across the dev/engineering/security/cs sector has been incredible the last few years - and realisation over the last year or so is that the rises were not sustainable in the face of changing economic outlook. The initial push to WFH and then the realisation that a lot of these roles can be effectively full time WFH really drove this wage inflation. A loosely example.... a full stack engineer previously earning £40k outside of Swansea on employer site could then earn £75k remotely working for a London based company. I've been on the pointy end of this with a few companies losing talent and not being able to compete salary wise.... or trying to compete, struggling and then cutting jobs. It’s been hard.
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This still seems cheap for London unless we are talking grad roles.
 
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Nasher said:
No more complicated than they were 15 years ago. Probably less actually, a lot of things have been dumbed down. Graphics got a bit better, but that is usually licenced from someone else.

AI in games is nowhere near as good as it used to be either. Which seems odd, but there are hardly any AI developers working in the games industry now. The money is elsewhere.
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This.
 
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