Epic Games, developers of the popular video game Fortnite and game development tool Unreal Engine, have announced an acquisition of the online music marketplace Bandcamp, best known for letting artists have more direct control of selling music and merch to fans.
Normal society with normal trust laws.
im not nervous at all hahahahahaha
What? What? What?
Best wishes to all musicians on there. Best case this doesnāt change much, but large acquisitions rarely seem to change things for the better.
Did Epic just buy Bandcamp for their shopping cart patent? I know a long time ago they applied to patent their shopping cart technology but Iām unsure if that was ever approved.
Thatās very possible. Cheaper than a license. Indicative of potential future patents.
Fingers extremely crossed that this will be a largely hands off acquisition, and Epic has been generally ānot terribleā as an acquirer, at least according to the Wikipedia summary. The most troubling was Houseparty (a social networking service they shuttered, but the staff was kept on), but the way they treated ArtStation seems fairly okay (they dropped the revenue cut from 30 to 12 percent) and otherwise the company seems unchanged?
But.
My emotional response to this is sorrow that one of the really good āwe just independantly do one thing well, and arenāt on the relentless growth curveā places is no longer that. It feels like when a good neighborhood business gets bought out and you know it wonāt be the same.
As many people on Twitter were quick to point out, it is worth noting that Tencent owns about 40% of Epic Games and like 10% of Spotify. Thatās not a controlling majority of either by any means, but it does get me to start wondering if thereās any sort of long term plan there.
Tim Sweeney still hasā¦51-54% (I donāt remember the exact number) stake of Epic, so even if this was a Tencent idea, it was still ultimately an Epic decision.
(sighs and resets the counter for Days Since Last Video Game Acquisition News back to zero)
Certainly better than being bought by Spotify or Apple, but still a shame for sure. I only hope this has no negative effects for musicians in terms of revenue shares or anything. Is Epic going to become the new Sony, start a record label and a film studio too?
Bandcamp is the exact product Epic has been trying to build since launching the Epic Games Store in 2018. I think this will be a good move while as theyāre competing with players like Sony, Microsoft, Valve etc.
Yikes on Bikes! I donāt see this ending wellā¦
