fuck whoever originally owned bandcamp for selling it to epic. I have a really bad feeling about them selling it to a music licensing firm. I’m wondering if a lot of musicians are going to find a change in TOS that signs copyright over to songtradr or something.
Seriously, this fucking sucks. So likely to see all the good things about Bandcamp disappear.
I could honestly care less about the video games, but the Bandcamp news is devastating. Is there anywhere else where you can buy lossless DRM-free music?
Gaming is worth FOUR times of movies. If you for some reason think mobile gaming is not gaming, it is still worth TWICE of Hollywood. You should care more about gaming. Hollywood is dying and AI will make it die faster. Gaming is the future of entertaiment.
Buddy look, I have played video games my entire life, but video games are not going to ever be the only form of entertainment.
Music has always, ALWAYS held the highest rung of entertainment and expression in my life. I could give less a shit about the hole Epic Games is digging for themselves.
Without music, I legitimately have no reason to live. The creation and observation of music has given me motivation and purpose in life in ways that nothing else has ever done.
whelp, grab those free thursday games while you still can
If they fold, will I even be able to access the games at all anymore?
I doubt they’ll fold anytime soon, but they’ll probably cut back spending where they can, and the writing on the wall is already there based on the quality of the free games offered lately. Next week is like “Overcooked: Cannibal Edition”
My husband was a producer at epic for 8 years. He got cut yesterday. We’re not even exercising our stock options, imho tim is spiraling and epic isn’t going anywhere good. Going to the supreme court isn’t cheap and then there’s that abandoned mall they bought 🤷♀️
I’m very sorry to hear your husband (and you) got the short end of all of this, I hope he can find a position with another company soon!
I stopped using Bandcamp when Epic bought them. Looks like they’ve sold it to Songtradr, who also bought 7digital (another music store that offered DRM-free FLAC files).
I’ve never heard of Songtradr. Does anyone have info on their history or ethics? I would love to have Bandcamp back as an artist-friendly, customer-friendly, relatively independent source of music, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.
https://rocknerd.co.uk/2023/09/28/bandcamp-has-been-sold-to-songtradr/
They’re making quite a lot of acquisitions, despite Bandcamp unionising earlier this year. It’s one of the biggest licencing companies in the world, so it probably won’t be great for the current services of Bandcamp when Songtradr wants to start monetising its users more meaningfully to make back the acquisition cost and break even.
Maybe good growth, maybe an attempt to gauge users as deep as possible before they just shutter the company. Could go either way.
I had no idea Bandcamp belonged to Epic Games ! To this day it’s my favorite platform to buy music.
Bought bandcamp just to shelf it? Thanks.
Shitty about Bandcamp. I hope it turns out ok.
I don’t really have any sympathy for people working for epic.
They knew what they were getting into.
I know a few people who work for Epic games, and generally they are treated incredibly well. Good pay, good benefits, still able to work from home… Their experience has been pretty much all positive.
However, Epic has been hemorrhaging money for a few years now. As successful as the Unreal Engine and Fortnite are, they’ve aquired half a dozen companies over the last few years, and offer an insane amount of free content between the Epic Games Store and the Unreal marketplace. They they acquire exclusives for their platform, they host tournaments with prize pools in the millions, and they have been trying to build a strong reputation as a service for gamers and developers that treats them well. It never seemed to balance out though, probably because people just were never really into buying games from them.
I truly don’t get the people that outright hate them though, even for their exclusivity grabs. I also might be mildly biased since I know how much worse devs are treated at other companies.
Really? I’ve heard Epic Games employees described as just ‘bodies.’
I believe the quote was something like, “I don’t care, just get us more bodies” to work on fortnite. James Stephanie Sterling did a video on it.
I’m not sure who you’ve been talking to, but your entire post reads like corporate bullshit. Epic sucks because their service is worse than Steam and tries to convince people like you it’s not.
Hemorrhaging money? What the fuck? Have you seen how much people are making at Epic? Dev says the pay is good, what do you think his higher ups are getting paid?
Like, only a legitimate fool would think Epic ‘hemorrhaging money’ is any cause for concern. No, any inconsistencies in where money is going stems solely from who they’re paying. I.e. people doing as little work as possible while making as much money as possible.
Sorry this needs to be explained to you, but I truly think you have been taken for a ride. If not, then you’re trying to take others for one.
Gonna block you now though, brother. After reading your post, I don’t believe you have anything to offer me and are just going to double-down on Epic being a company worth supporting. See ya.
There’s nothing quite like making an emotional, incendiary response to a good faith comment and then blocking the person while acting as if you are morally superior.
Perhaps in the future, should you ever unblock me and see this comment, you’ll consider an alternative perspective as an opportunity to change your mind and not as some sort of conflict.
