[bradleybuda]

> Unfortunately it is their employees that are paying the price of leadership making it rain [...]

Epic's employees reaped the gains while it rained in the form of paychecks. While it sucks that people are losing their jobs, those individuals received (much of) the upside of this investment and their jobs never would have existed in the first place had the investment not been made. Their paychecks are not being clawed back. Shareholders (including executives who are largely paid via out-of-the money options) are bearing the costs. Consumers also benefit from increased competitive pressure on Valve and subsidized game prices.

Would it be "better" if Epic had not invested in the Epic Game Store and paid a dividend or conducted a share buyback?

[aaron425]

For what it’s worth, Epic is a private company and employee upside has been capped in the sense that compensation has been mostly cash (and not Netflix tier cash). Exposure to equity may been a better way to share in upside and ensure some buy-in.

IMO investing in a marketplace was fine, but hemorrhaging money for 7 years on non-performant software + free game bundles is probably not defensible from an executive standpoint.

[laughing_man]

In my experience the buy-in you get from employee stock programs scales inversely with the head count. I worked for a huge company that gave out stock options. Nobody was really motivated by the stocks, because the company was so large your individual contribution meant exactly nothing unless you were at least a VP. A vesting bonus of some kind would have done just as much.