One point to make: Paradox, while certainly not a bunch of guys in a basement, is not a large company. SEK 225 million is $23 million. Even if you project that they will continue to increase their revenue for the rest of the year and get to SEK 1 billion, that’s only $100 million in revenues for the entire year. That’s not a large company.
Tencent profits fall by a third and massively miss estimates. Gaming revenue down to 36% of overall revenues from 45% last year.
Man those EGS exclusives must be really expensive!
Probably more to do with China banning new games for the better part of a year, but they don’t break out the investment in Epic.
Can’t wait for Tencent to take over that final 4% of Epic as a desperate move.
Tim doesn’t need the money; so he has zero incentive to allow it.
Not sure he needs to. He’s at 44% and 16% are in other random hands. What prevents those other shares from falling to subsidiaries of Tencent?
It won’t be relevant. Tim would still be the majority investor; thus calling all the shots. Any attempt would be considered a hostile takeover; and I’m sure other investors who are friends of Tim and still in the company, wouldn’t allow a third-party to takeover the company.
Explain. How is he the majority investor once he doesn’t have the majority?
You don’t just go from 44% majority investor - just like that. It simply doesn’t happen. Tencent has 40%; and the other 16% is held by people who I am sure are loyal to Tim and won’t sell to Tencent when they could very well sell to Tim. That’s how these things tend to work.
You mean, the various people from different companies, who just invested a billion dollars in Epic to make a quick buck, are somehow loyal to him? Are you joking?
The 16% isn’t owned by one party. As I said earlier, some of them (including Mark Rein and others who are part of Epic) simply won’t allow it. Tencent would have to buy up another 5% of Epic at its current valuation for them to be the majority. And I am 100% certain that there are safeguards against Tim ever not being the majority owner of Epic. These safeguards aren’t new; they exist in all companies.
Some shares can also be non-voting shares, so they don’t count for purposes of control. And Epic probably still has right of repurchase on any transactions, since they’re a private company. The hysterical fear-mongering that Tencent is going to take over Epic any day now is ridiculous.
Thank you.
EA is laying off 300+ people. Mostly in marketing.
"Today we took some important steps as a company to address our challenges and prepare for the opportunities ahead. As we look across a changing world around us, it’s clear that we must change with it. We’re making deliberate moves to better deliver on our commitments, refine our organization and meet the needs of our players. As part of this, we have made changes to our marketing and publishing organization, our operations teams, and we are ramping down our current presence in Japan and Russia as we focus on different ways to serve our players in those markets. In addition to organizational changes, we are deeply focused on increasing quality in our games and services. Great games will continue to be at the core of everything we do, and we are thinking differently about how to amaze and inspire our players.
This is a difficult day. The changes we’re making today will impact about 350 roles in our 9,000-person company. These are important but very hard decisions, and we do not take them lightly. We are friends and colleagues at EA, we appreciate and value everyone’s contributions, and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are looking after our people to help them through this period to find their next opportunity. This is our top priority.”
Marketing is probably still sore too that they had very little to do with the Apex Legends launch. Maybe EA will just continue dumping stuff on the street in the future without warning.
Translation:
Why are we paying 350 marketing staff when we can just toss a few million at Twitch streamers?
I hope those affected are able to land on their feet and find a better opportunity.
That’s too bad for the employees. I hope they land on their feet and get going again quickly.
I appreciate the dev talking about this, but he didn’t have any numbers for the production cost of the Founder’s Edition with the physical goodies. He pointed out that he made more revenue from the 60 unit sales of the Founder’s Edition (more than half the total revenue for the launch month) than he did with the regular or digital deluxe editions, but he didn’t know the actual profit margin. He seems like a smart cookie, so I assume he didn’t blow out his budget with whatever tchotchkes he included, but I’d love to know that number as well.
Still, $7k in the first month with no specific marketing is pretty darned good, although I think a lot of other devs would argue that the time and money he invests on his YouTube channel with 40k subs is essentially the marketing.