https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/07/disney-to-take-1point5-billion-stake-in-epic-games-maker-of-fortnite.html
Disney is investing $1.5 billion for an equity stake in Epic Games.
I... yeah, what? Disney is what does it? You were cool with Tencent, Sony, Lego, the massive fine for mishandling underage information? Disney. That's your line.
Alright.
Godot is honestly just so much nicer to use. I switched to it back in the day because of that after using Unreal and Unity. I didn't even know what open source was at that point, I just liked it more.
Well the launcher can hardly get any worse.
Today I found out there's no way to change the default install location. And I learned this just today because I so rarely use it. Why is this launcher such a mess. It's seriously like they're not even trying.
There are open source implementations of their launcher. Specifically there's "legendary", which is the thing that can download and launch games (this is a command line tool). Fortunately there's also "Heroic", which will use legendary in the background and give you a normal/usable user interface, desktop shortcuts and so on. Also doesn't work like spyware for epic on your computer, as their own store/launcher does.
That's honestly good to know, thanks!
Although it is kind of telling that in order to use their launcher without getting a stroke your best bet is an alternative launcher. Still, I'm going to have a look at Heroic. Would be a shame to never touch all those free games just because Epic sucks so much.
It only exists so they don't have to give steam their cut. They don't have much incentive to do anything else as long as they know they have exclusives locked down like Fortnite that bring in the cash
You can't? I've only ever used it once, in the past few years, and I installed Fortnite* to my external hard drive. Was on a Mac though, maybe there it's different. But yeah it's still godawful.
* my friends unfortunately managed to convince me to try to play it (didn't work in the end since they stopped building it for Mac and my main gaming machine is Linux)
You can change the directory manually for every single install. But a default install path for your games - nope.
Hah. The framing from normie news is so weird. It's "bizarrely Disney is investing on Fortnite", instead of "Disney buys a stake on the people making Unreal, which at this point is like half of their and everybody else's VFX pipeline".
I wonder if the gaming news guys will have a better picture or the "Disney Fornite whaaaa?!" angle is what people will take away from this across the board.
I mean... last I remember Fortnite was more than 80% of the revenue of Epic Games... so I feel like saying that Disney investing on Fortnite ain't that incorrect.
For straight revenue, yeah, that'd be right. Technically everything else is a rounding error. But if Epic was one of those single game unicorns like Riot or Rovio this would not make much sense. The synergies of Unreal with both the movie and theme park buisness for Disney seem like a better fit. I mean, assuming the move makes actual sense, Disney is out there talking about game collaborations and it's not like it's the first time they've spent money randomly and poorly in the gaming business. I just think the investment would make sense even if Fortnite wasn't in the mix.
And either way it's being blown out of proportion by the news because they haven't even bought the company. 1.5B is what? 10% as much as Tencent owns?
No I'm more thinking they would remove them and keep them exclusive on epic as they are part owners now. Sure the games are shit but that is not the point
Yup. There's a few old re-releases there, not sure if they're patched up for modern Windows though. Actually, they had a publisher sale on Steam quite recently.
And not just that, when they acquired LucasFilm they not only got a backlog of old Star Wars and Indiana Jones games already on Steam, but also Sam & Max Hit the Road. AFAIK Sam & Max is an independent franchise but LucasArts and thus Disney own the rights to Hit the Road.
I doubt they'd pull their games off of Steam. Disney are interested in Fortnite as a content delivery platform, not in EGS
I have been blindsided before, but honestly right now I'm in the same boat on that. Disney isn't interested in app deployment or distribution, just to advertise their products to kids.
And even so, my copy of SAMHTR is still on my Steam account and the files are there to use with ScummVM (which I believe LucasArts actually did when the game hit Steam)
Last published valuation I see is 31.5B in 2022, so roughly 5%.
What’s interesting is the shares, Kirkbi (Lego) owns 3%, Sony 4.9%, Tencent 40%, and the CEO was reported as owning “over half”, I’d assume that means the remaining 52.1% - which would mean he gave up his majority stake for this deal.
I guess it's good they already sold Bandcamp then? Still pissed they ever bought it in the first place.