- cross-posted to:
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- games
- gaming
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- games
- gaming
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This doesn’t end well for anyone does it?
Did epic not have enough money already? Was fort night not printing it quickly enough?
I don’t know what their bottom line was, but during the pandemic Epic was just pouring money out to snag up the top engineers in the industry.
Taking a stake is different than buying it out. To me this is Disney trying to get better deals for their characters/properties to be in FN, while also raking profits on both ends.
I have this conspiracy theory where Disney and Tencent concocted 20 year plan to merge through a common stake in Epic. Just don’t ask about any details because there are none.
It makes total sense. Both companies existing in a pseudo-merger makes a lot of advantage sense. Disney gets to keep its image clean of the anti-consumer practices of epic these past few years, while epic sharks its way around Steam and corners small devs, bullying them into exclusivity. (Were they bought out, “Disney subsidiary” might be a dirty word)
Epic gets to make games-as-services with ever more integration, with fortnite, league, and car soccer. This begins also the availability of Disney exclusive GAAS, but also with tie ins to epic titles.
In return Disney gets, for no effort, access to the market American companies can not tread - China. Tencent comes with Chinese party seal of approval built in. Marketing into the country nets Disney the market saturation and brand recognition they’ve been wanting in a new audience, and all they’d have to do is have epic make a game and sell it with their IP. Disney doesn’t have to ask the cccp for marketing permission because it’s a Chinese company product trying to make Chinese people sales.
The whole thing is so…dystopia that it just fits so well with the Disney that Walt built, and expanded as a cutthroat businessman.
This would fit in with some of the weird shit Disney has pulled in recent years with editing films for Chinese releases, and how they toed the line about the “camps” around the release of the Mulan live-action remake. They’ve been trying to break into the Chinese market hard for years now.
Fug. Wish I could say this theory makes me sick, but it just makes me feel empty.
Interesting play here. I’m not sure if investors understand that games don’t last forever, and a game out of nowhere can take the top relevancy spot overnight. Pal world is a good recent example of this.
I’m not claiming fortnite is going away anytime soon, but might not be worth a $1.5B investment.
Either way, I’m not mad if the gaming industry gets more jobs.
Epic should count their blessings considering what the game started as and the billions they raked in during the meantime. I bet their active player count is well down from its peak though. Probably the kids grew up and/or got fed up of all the monetisation.
As for Disney they’ve tried many times to get into gaming and failed. I wonder if their corporate culture which is a subtle blend of naked greed, political correctness, risk aversion and schizophrenia over licensing IP just scuppers them every time. I’ve played a couple of decent games but most of their content is either shovelware or naked cash grabs. Even when they make a critically acclaimed or successful games, there is a sense that if they don’t get ALL THE MONEY, then they’ll shitcan it right then and there. Look at Disney Infinity or Club Penguin as examples of games that were killed for very unclear reasons.
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