Witnessing a moment of clarity... Unity edition

I hadn't spent much time commenting on Unity's attempted self-immolation of last month, mainly because I didn't really have much to add to the conversation.

Unity, for those that still somehow don't know, is the single most-used engine for game development, with something like seventy percent of Steam games being based on Unity, and an overwhelming presence on Android and iOS. Unreal, the second-most-popular game engine, has less than half Unity's presence on Steam, and no presence at all on iOS anymore, thanks to their "Project Liberty" stunt, and the Epic v Apple lawsuit which followed.

Confirmed: Epic's big loss was a much bigger loss than they were letting on

Back in 2021, when I was posting about Epic's big gamble having turned into a big loss for them, I suspected that they could only keep the con running for so long.

Of course, even Epic Games can't sustain this kind of burn rate forever; eventually, they're going to have to make changes in order the stop the bleeding, and put in place some sort of plan to "return to profitability" (corporate code of mass layoffs). Given that their legal battle with Apple has only served to make the industry-standard 30% cut to the platform look more essential than ever, and that Epic has done almost nothing to earn back the trust and good will of the Steam community (which, at this point, includes basically all of the PC gaming community), and also given that efforts to repair their brand and rebuild their business can't even start until the Apple lawsuit, at least, is either dropped or settled, I'm starting to have serious doubts about Epic's long-term prospects. I beginning to wonder if Epic will be able to survive at all, in the medium-to-long term.

Well, it turns out that I was a fucking prophet. Epic are indeed burning through cash faster than even Fortnite can make it, and have now resorted to mass layoffs to cut their burn rate.

As reported in Yahoo! Finance:

Fortnite and Unreal Engine maker Epic Games has confirmed that it is laying off approximately 830 employees, representing roughly 16% of Epic's total workforce.

[...]

The memo sent to employees by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney was later posted on the Epic Games website.

"For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators," Sweeney said. "I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.

"While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics. [...] But we still ended up far short of financial sustainability. We concluded that layoffs are the only way, and that doing them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances."

I fucking called it. 

Witnessing a moment of clarity

Jesus. Was it really three years ago that I first posted about Game Pass?

There are users for whom Game Pass is a good fit; heavy users who really will save money using the service, wealthy gamers for whom the cost of the service is essentially irrelevant, and ruthlessly opportunistic gamers who will pay for a single month only, and only when they "need" it, to play exactly one newly-released game and then cancel [...]

Game Pass is not a good deal; its value proposition is not, and never has been, "insane;" it is not a value option at all, really, except for people who semi-professionally play a wide variety of games, or people who may well have burgeoning video game addictions. So, be honest with yourself. 

Do you have a problem? Are video games taking over your life, in ways that are possibly self-destructive and unhealthy? If so, then you don't need Game Pass; you need help, and there's no shame in asking for that help.

For a long time, I thought I was alone, screaming my frustration into the void. Because the deal really was bad, but nobody else seemed to be willing to call it out for the anti-consumer nonsense it was. Even as every multimedia conglomerate on Earth launched their own subscriber-driven Contentᵀᴹ service, only to watch them all beat hasty retreats after those services lost boatloads of money, Game Pass was made of Teflonᵀᴹ. Nothing ever stuck; the narrative never evolved.

That is, until today. From Ethan Gach at Kotaku:

It’s Time To Start Killing Your Subscriptions

The prices are going up and you probably barely use them anyway

I feel so seen right now.

So, you're tweeting a jpeg of an apology...

... here's how not to do it.

[Sigh.]

OK, first things first.