[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.

[joveian]

Thanks, I'm glad they aren't doing the random aspect now. Microtransactions are still a horrible way to design games but at least it is something if you know what you are getting. However, even if gambling isn't exactly the right word for the current situation there do still seem to be more recent stories about kids running up quite a bill on Fortnite. They still seem to be trying to get kids to spend as much money as possible. A quick search finds that this came up in Epic vs. Apple:

https://www.thegamer.com/judge-fortnites-microtransactions-c...

[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.