I’m guessing none of these shares were purchased from Tencent’s 40% stake? That’s often been the main reason I limit my interaction with Epic where possible.
Can one take a stake in a company? Or do they buy a stake in a company by purchasing shares? Why can’t we just use the words that are meant for the thing we’re describing?
Taking a stake implies that they just yoink grab it and it’s theirs. Buying a stake means spending money to own a share. Maybe it’s a silly technicality, but words matter goddamnit.
It’s 2024 can we stop pretending headlines like these are some kind of potential indicator of good rather than just putting pins in a map for the sake of records where billion dollar companies ravage mile wide swathes through forests of smaller functional companies and destroy everything good about them?
Yes I know in this particular case Epic is already a dysfunctional massive trashfire but this will just accelerate the enshittification into more of a drag race.
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.
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.
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.
Genuinely not a bad idea, if you lean into the nearly transhumanist power fantasy of a guy taking on an alien armada with a jetpack and a rifle. It’s an excuse for ridiculous set-pieces where a proper aircraft or vehicle would not work. You can’t sustain that continuously for two whole acts - but fortunately, every time the guy stops, he is just a guy. The difference between standing around talking and zooming away at face-melting speeds is whether he feels like it.
The major downside is that Tony Stark’s already been there.
I was thinking something more like a sci-fi, existential horror film where Harrier is the only force preventing the utter ruination of the universe by an endless horde of Lovecraftian monsters, and his loneliness and indestructibility drives him to extremes, but the Iron Man-esque angle could work, too.
Ooh. So the jetpack-and-rifle angle emerge as he figures out he’s got an Unbreakable situation. Some tinkerer builds increasingly glass-cannon hot-rod fighter jets that are never as maneuverable as he wants. All his miraculous close scrapes in crash landings are really a result of whatever force trapped him in this surreal choke-point holding back the forces of chaos. Once he figures out he’s cursed with immortality, he doesn’t care if his guns leak deadly radiation or glow white-hot, so long as they spray plasma downrange. All of it is just a means to deliver him in-person to whatever elder god is trying to swallow Earth. So he can twist its dicks off.
Which is quite a thing to imagine, from squid-faced-Khorne’s perspective. You’ve found a thriving civilization that’s barely scooting around its solar system. They couldn’t even block your portal on their homeworld. Seems like easy pickings, maybe a few million scorpion-horse-locust minions killed by their measly bullets, then you get centuries of driving people mad and cracking open juicy mineral-rich planets. Your divine adversary blessed one guy. Token resistance. An admission of futility. But… your dudes keep failing. Plenty get past him, but none manage to stop him. You send the big fuckers straight for him, really nip that in the bud, and hours later he’s right back up in another flimsy contraption. They can smack him to the ground and he just runs closer. You are a four-dimensional entity older than this universe. You have despoiled countless galaxies guarded by valiant forces. You were not previously aware that you could sweat.
I just really hope they select games that have a good story or even better have a great story that and attach it to some IP that has very little storyline. People come for the IP but stay for the story. Unfortunately they’ll probably just pick the game with the largest fan base, attach some well known actors to it and then cram a bunch of nostalgic references into it and call it a day. Especially since the success of sonic means a lot of money will be sunk into it and a lot of suits will try to push dumb shit through.
Seriously though: the dumbest answer that might work is Daytona USA. A live-action anime that’s relentlessly cheerful and energetic. Like the Speed Racer movie, but with less melodrama, less surrealism, and not two hours long. Establish a rivalry with no villains, some stakes low enough that the protagonist might lose, and the sort of heightened realism you get in musicals. If the pit crew do a choreographed spin before changing the tires, you think nothing of it, because it happened in time with the soundtrack.
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