[throwhauser]

I don't know anything about Epic Games, but as a huge fan of Bandcamp, this feels like a bit of a drag.

There's something about Bandcamp that seems exactly right. It's an open, fair and creative way to discover and publish music, that is really distinct from the rest of the music business.

I'm struggling to see how that fits into a gigantic video game company. If it has to pull in so much money that it "moves the needle" at Epic at all, I don't see how it can remain anything close to what it is today.

[munificent]

Every time a small successful tech company gets swallowed by a behemoth, I feel sad. Bandcamp was one of the good ones. If Panic ever gets bought, I'll straight up cry.

An ecosystem thrives by having a variety of organisms of different species and sizes interacting. The tech business ecosystem increasingly looks more like a giant pasture of uniform grass being grazed by half a dozen aging tumorous cows.

[Apocryphon]

Everyone's forgotten that monocultures are bad.

For what it's worth, Panic appears to be one of those smaller indie developers similar to say Bare Bones Software or the Omni Group. I think those are sustainable non-startup software shops that can exist and persist on their own.

[munificent]

Many companies can exist and persist on their own until a behemoth decides they shouldn't.

It's not about "can this business get enough users to be profitable?" it's about "will some huge corporation decide to put them out of business because the cost to do so is a rounding error for them?"

At any point in time, Apple could decide to ship a nice FTP client with macOS, add web language support to XCode and Panic is dust.

[Apocryphon]

Well, at least they're still making games.

[ryantgtg]

I’m with you. Never heard of this Epic Games company. This is worrying.

I fell behind on downloading all of my 426 purchases on bandcamp, but now I feel a strong desire to catch up.

[johnnyanmac]

"Never heard of this Epic Games company. "

Creators of Unreal Engine, one of the two de facto 3rd party game engines in the industry, created way back in the 90's. You very likely played some game or 6 that was made using it. Also the developers of several games themselves like Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, Infinity Blade, and Bulletstorm.

But I guess more recently people would call them "The creators of Fortnite", that free to play battle royale that usurped PUBG as "the face" of the genre. They also have a PC game store that is relatively recent and under some ire from consumers for reasons that'd take a whole essay to fully explain.

As a middleman between games and developers, the reasons to purchase a music vendor is numerous. Time will tell what they do with it, but most of their previous aquisitions are hands-off.

[ryantgtg]

Thank you. Ok, I guess have heard of them then. I played Unreal! And I've heard many mentions of the Unreal engine.

> but most of their previous aquisitions are hands-off

Thanks.

Given the immediate negative reactions that people have to this news (see the countless "what is a bandcamp alternative?" posts going around right now), I wonder how it will impact one of Bandcamp's most important assets: their Daily blog. From what I can tell, the blog posts are largely written by independent music journalists. The topics are all over the place (in a good way), and they are fun, personal ways to discover music. Will we see some of these core writers leave (on their own volition)? Likewise, will the direction of what is highlighted in these posts shift to align with other Epic assets?

On the technical end, there are plenty of legitimate complaints about Bandcamp's app. I would imagine Epic = more resources for the app, for better or for worse.

[joveian]

My negative reaction is related to Epic's microtransaction (aka gambling, often aimed at children) and DRM use as well as being 40% owned by Tencent so your puchases now will help fund genocide.

[mfost]

But they don't do gambling. Why is that lie still going on years after it was first invented?

[johnnyanmac]

The original story was that Fortnite had lootboxes for a few years (in that time where most of the industry was trying it out after Valve and Blizzard saw success). Fortnite is where the "lootboxes are gambling" debates really hit the high gear.

sometime in 2019 that random aspect was removed, however. To my knowledge, there is still a rotating shop of skins to purchase with premium currency. But you know what you are getting now. It's not too much different from how free MOBA's monetize their games with a bunch of cosmetic skins.

[ryantgtg]

I mean, mine too. I’m very disappointed and worried about this. I’m less worried about the possible tech changes than I am about supporting a crappy company that I hate.

[AdmiralAsshat]

If you think of Epic not as a videogame company but as any other multi-billion dollar company that exists to "Maximize return for our investors by any means necessary," It makes sense. Take a company that is making money and has a large user-base, then "increase profits" (usually to the detriment of everyone involved except the company).