People concerned over the "Exclusivity deals" on the game store end aren't looking at the "Developer" acquisitions which have rarely lead to the kinds of ends that, say, Google's Aquisitions have.
They made a lot of money.
> it only buys popular software, because it's goal is getting more people locked into it's walled garden Epic store.
The rev stream is royalties from engine use since the free tiers are locked to UE, not EGS.
> They made a lot of money.
They reportedly worked with Epic Games on technical support for PUBG features, and Epic Games may've ended up using some of them in their own Battle Royale mode:
> Notably, Epic Games updated their in-development title Fortnite, a sandbox-based survival game that included the ability to construct fortifications, to include a battle royale mode that retained the fortification aspects. Known as Fortnite Battle Royale, Epic later released it as a standalone free-to-play game in September 2017. Shortly after its release, Bluehole expressed concerns about the game, acknowledging that while they cannot claim ownership of the battle royale genre, they feared that since they had been working with Epic for technical support of the Unreal engine, that they may have had a heads-up on planned features they wanted to bring to Battlegrounds and could release it first.
Quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds#Epic_Games...
Article: https://www.pcgamer.com/pubg-exec-clarifies-objection-to-for...
Maybe. But Unity is technically still used in more games and is being just as aggressive in acquisitions between Parsec, Syncsketch, Ziva, and even Weta Digital. It's definitely not going to be a battle won by outspending the competition.
I wouldn't be surprised if the acquisition is to provide royalty free music to the games industry via Unreal Engine, as was the case for Quixel, but none of this is really good news for artists trying to make money unless Bandcamp plans to pay the artists out of their own pocket for a royalty free side.
All of that is speculation of course, we'll see where it goes. It's just a weird acquisition if it's not for integration I feel.
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if that's Epic's endgoal. But the music industry is a gargantuan behemoth with paper thin profit margins, and Epic is already struggling enough battling the mobile market (a much more lucrative market where the fight makes sense).
I can't see any significant push like that happening for a decade+. This and the harmonix aquisition are probably just the foot in the door needed for those plans should they want to push one day.
I don't see why that's the case? Just give Bandcamp artists the tools to set their own royalty structure (In the same way they price their own songs) and integrate this marketplace into Unreal or wherever else. Self published artists get a source of revenue typically reserved for labels and Bandcamp gets the cut instead of someone else.
