Massive lay-offs at Bandcamp by way of Epic Games

Industry News:

Bandcamp dismisses 50% of its staff amid Epic Games mass layoffs | GamesIndustry.biz

Half of the workforce in Bandcamp is affected by a mass of layoffs by parent company Epic Games.

Bandcamp was acquired in March last year, but in September this year Epic announced that they would be laying off 16% of the total workforce in the company.

Epic Games is also finalising the sale of Bandcamp to Songtradr, announced at the same time as the layoffs. Songtradr has said that Bandcamp became too bloated to manage and needed to "be adjusted".

Kotaku has reported that dismissed employees will receive 6 months severance while the Bandcamp United union is still negotiating better terms.

Analyst expects Sony to react to Xbox’s Activision deal with a major acquisition of its own | VGC (videogameschronicle.com)

Xbox says not to expect surprise Activision Blizzard Game Pass drops this year | VGC (videogameschronicle.com)

We are back on the news-recycling train again with Microsoft confirming the Activision Blizzard acquisition, so here's what we're seeing already.

Industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto believes that Sony will be considering an acquisition of a similar size after the conclusion of Microsoft's merger. It's acquired Bungie and a bunch of other studies in the interim, and let's not pretend that these reports have been popping up ever since the ActiBlizz merger last year. Likelihood? Who knows, but let's take this with a grain of salt!

Phil Spencer says not to expect new games from ActiBlizz on GamePass any time soon, and yet Video Games Chronicle tantalises us with the Bethesda Games drop upon the purchase of their company in 2021.

Papa Phil also says that the timed exclusives for Call of Duty across consoles will no longer be the case - there will be content parity across all manufacturers in future.

CEO claims Nintendo couldn’t deliver a better modern N64 than Analogue 3D | VGC (videogameschronicle.com)

The spicy CEO of Analogue, a company making an N64-alike console, has been quoted as indicating that Nintendo itself couldn't make a better experience of the classic console if it tried.

His quote: "To me, it's either this, or buy a fucking original N64 and a CRT. End of Story."

Despite Christopher Taber's posturing, there is still no price point and a release window in 2024 for the Analogue 3D console.

Players frustrated with Nintendo's emulated experience on Switch may be delighted to hear his confidence, though!

The UK games industry pays juniors more but seniors less than other tech sectors | GamesIndustry.biz

GamesIndustry.biz and XpertHR have been working on data analysis of salaries in UK Games Studios, and found that the average salary for an entry-level position is almost 20% higher than in tech, but senior directors are paid 15% lower.

While the data set is small, across 25 studios and 3000 employees, the data will become available in summary for free, and in-depth by paywall, to companies interested in the...