News Epic Games acquires Rocket League's Psyonix

Kind of a similar thing that the company I work for did, instead of innovate, we just purchased other tech companies. In the end, what we had on our books was so fragmented, that it just didnt work anymore and we had to sell off loads of stuff. I see this as having to close loads of developers in the future because you just cant have that many floating about.

 

Everyone: Valve, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard et al are OK selling their first party games exclusively through their own distribution service, but Epic are doing it for 3rd party developers so that's Double-Plus-Ungood"
Epic: OK then *buys 3rd party developer*
Everyone:

Not an unprecedented move; Valve built a good portion of their portfolio and staff through acquiring developers, e.g. Turtle Rock for Left4Dead, the Narbuncular Drop team for Portal, TF Software for team Fortress Classic's Source port and TF2, the DoD mod team for Day of Defeat, the Alien Swarm mod team for Alien Swarm, Icefrog for Dota2, Campo Santo and the upcoming In the Valley of the Gods, etc.

 

FTFY

 

got a sneaky feeling sweeney would be **** enough to stop supporting games previosly sold on steam. epic doesnt just want to compete with steam or anyone else but compleate anihalation.

still they bagged them shelves a awesome game, just hope it wont peter out at some point

 

There is another angle to consider:
It may not have been the decision of Epic to begin with, but rather Tencent due to the recent actions by the government of China.

China recently tightened restrictions on violence in games even more, so Tencent wanting the only globally popular non violent esports game in their stable makes sense.

 

Tencent do not have a controlling stake in Epic. They also have little qualm about violence (even for the China internal market) e.g. their Call of Duty variant or PuBG investment.

 

I never once mentioned or implied a controlling stake.
Howver, Tencent have thrown hundreds of millions at Epic and own ~40%, come on you got to have enough common sense to understand that Tencent didn't do that for the sake of being charitable to Epic and will no doubt be heavily influencing the decision making process.

Who do you mean by "they"?
I was on about the government in China cracking down on violent games with garbage like its no corpses or blood policy, not Tencent or Epic.

And if you can't even have corpses in games then buying the only globally popular esports game without violence makes perfect sense for Tencent and Epic ain't gonna say no that... because (prior to this acquisition) they had zilch when it comes to games other than Fortnite.

 

No, they want that sweet sweet outside-of-China profit. Same situation as with Russia and foreign investments by oligarchs: rigid state control of internal monetary policy means China's oligarchs want to move as much of their wealth as possible to companies the Chinese authorities do not control (i.e. convert as much RMB to USD as possible bypassing China's restriction on raw currency transfers). Tencent is an investment vehicle of China's 'ruling class', not of the Party.

 

Timmy buys BL3, parents get home
"No Timmy, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo"
On the bright side, at least timmy will grow up know crumpets are crunk.

 

Just give the kid Factorio, not violent and you'll never have to see the kid again

 

Tencent owns 40% of the company and provides hundreds of millions in financial backing, of course they a controlling stake. They don't have the controlling stake, but the only owners with a worthwhile percentage are Sweeney and Tencent, those are the two parties in control.