Look, I understand that the point of business, including Epic, is to make money. And when a business isn't making money — or actually losing money — sometimes tough decisions have to be made. Usually these hard choices are made by people who aren't affected at all, so I'm sure they're a little less harsh, but still.
So when a company like Epic lays off a thousand people, it's easy to see that it's just a sad, necessary way to right the ship. But one lingering question remains in Epic's mass layoffs: how is Tim Sweeney doing so badly? How do you fire a whole thousand people and then insult them by basically saying, “Someone should hire those people!”?
Sweeney's Tweet is tone-deaf at best and unhelpful at worst
If you haven't seen the episode, I'm not kidding. Tim Sweeney, a seemingly human being, tweeted: “Over the coming days, employers will see a flood of resumes from quality, once-in-a-lifetime people. It's important to understand that Epic has never lowered our hiring standards as we've grown, and the layoffs weren't performance-based 'rightsizing,' as several companies call it, which sounds like only a few percent of their top games these days. Their discipline.”
And hey, that's not a bad sentiment. They are good workers! They are talented! He deserves a job! Epic has never lowered their recruiting standards! Those fired developers are the best of the best, sir, with distinction. And all of that would mean something if you weren't taking away their health care and ability to pay their mortgage. What a unique opportunity to get qualified employees after multiple layoffs!
Half-Life and Portal writer calls out Tim Sweeney for epic game layoffs, says Gabe is 'better' at making money
Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek took aim at Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney for the recent layoffs.
Heck, you can probably get them at a discount! Nothing personal here; Epic just needed some (super talented!) bodies to bridge the gap from “losing money” to “maybe Gen Z will soon be nostalgic and buy V-Bucks for old times' sake?” And if there's one thing that saves your live service game, it's ditching the people who spent years making this game. Especially when they're the people who designed some of the most famous money-making aspects of the game. Seriously, they fired the artist who designed the game's iconic face.
That's why it's so offensive. Tim Sweeney basically treats his laid off staff like someone put a couch on the curb with a paper sign that says “free, no bedbugs.” You think that sounds generous, but it's really just a way to avoid feeling guilty when you see that the couch is still on the sidewalk. Sweeney is the company's CEO, not the head of a development team whose firing was beyond his control.
So for him to say, “Oh my god, these people I just deleted are so amazing, just the best, someone should give them a job” is a massive slap in the face. Hell, it would have been less crappy if he literally slapped them in the face. There would at least be some honesty in the relationship between the employee and the CEO.
Sweeney's report is unlikely to help anyone
Getting a general shout-out from a game manager isn't going to get someone a new job. And constructing the statement to sound like a great opportunity for other businesses is so wildly off the mark it's almost funny. “They're good people I don't want to pay anymore, so if you need someone, you're in luck!” It was a layoff, not a job fair. The employees here have no other option but to get in the car and muster up the courage to tell their family what happened. Having to interview multiple times with multiple companies after being fired is not an opportunity. These are human beings we are talking about.
Also not for nothing when you say your layoffs are not for performance, it probably isn't great for the morale of those remaining who are also worried about their jobs. Like I said, I understand that he probably meant well. I also understand that he meant well above the people who are not doing well now.
But telling laid-off employees that they weren't let go because of performance is double-edged comfort. “Oh, we did great? And you trashed us yet? Thank you so much for your kindness!” Congratulations: you've told your entire company that no matter how well they do and how successful the product is, the chances of long-term employment at Epic are poor.
And let me say that I would love to love Tim Sweeney. Or I would be happy to not think about him at all and at the same time respect his company. We're both bitter nerds, so we have something in common. In addition, he has created games that I enjoy and helped develop the game engine that powers some of my favorite titles. Apparently he also bought a lot of land in North Carolina to preserve as wilderness. I can admit that this is a good thing.
And while live service games aren't my cup of tea, I admire the quality, cohesion and creativity in Fortnite. Sweeney was at the helm of the business, and from that venture came much of the video game culture we have today. Fortnite is now like Nintendo: even people who know nothing about video games know it.
These developers made Fortnite what it is today
But on the other hand, that success and that money is very, very largely produced by workers. So when you're a man with billions of dollars firing people from a company, you're not nice when you say “please give the people I just fired a job” you're just rubbing salt in the wound. I may be wrong, but I don't think many of these workers will be picked up immediately because Tim Sweeney tweeted. I'm not sure anything positive ever came out of a Tim Sweeney tweet. Or any tweet at all.
Some of the laid off workers will find work quickly, yes. They are talented people. But in this current moment of hell, there are far more skilled talents available than there are slots to put that talent into. People don't have to be told by their boss to be cocky because their boss also orders security to immediately revoke their email and Slack access. It really gives a “this hurts me more than you” kind of energy. Hey, has anyone picked up the couch yet?
I'm also willing to believe Epic when they say it's not a mass shooting to turn to AI. But we also live in a world where Tim Sweeney has repeatedly defended AI in games and criticized other developers for not liking the technology or having railings around it. Imagine him going to the mat for his staff the same way he went to the mat for Grok.
Epic Games CEO says making GTA-level games is the next 'logical step'
Sweeney agrees with Musk that AI-generated games are the next step for the technology.
It is more than allowed. It is his right as an executive and a human being to run the company the way he wants and to be passionate about technology that other people are not. He can defend or support anyone or anything he wants. But that doesn't make it any less horrible to fire the staff of an entire public high school and then basically write, “I just burned down an orphanage; anyone want to adopt these kids?”
I understand that. Epic made a fortune on Fortnite, but as Tyra said in that America's Next Top Model documentary that made her look super bad, you can only stay on top for so long. Just as other video game companies have had to pivot to accommodate the new, hot model that Fortnite was built on, Fortnite is now struggling to stay relevant. Waves come, waves go. Every popular work of art will one day seem a little quaint and a lot scary to a newer audience next to newer art.
Trust me, I know: I was a huge Hamilton fan, and now I feel vaguely embarrassed about it. I'm sure Tim Sweeney feels the same way about Fortnite when he's not on Twitter acting like he was still bullied in high school and not a literal billionaire with more institutional power than 99.9999 percent of humanity. The world has been the cruelest of all, he thinks as he looks out the window of his private jet.
Game developers are not the reason Epic lost money
Maybe it was a mistake that Epic spent years suing other companies for not letting them have all the real money from V-Bucks. Maybe it was a mistake for Epic to over-extend its cash cow to include every single cultural phenomenon in an attempt to appeal to all earthly audiences at once. Maybe it was Epic's mistake to create a storefront that is so deeply annoying that even giving away free games didn't get people to use it.
I'm more than happy to shop at various digital stores, but the Epic Games Store feels like it was designed by a team of parents trying to add so much friction to the fun that you just give up and walk out. I'm not asking for much. If itch.io can do it with a limited budget, so can Epic with a bigger one. If GOG can do it with mostly old games, Epic can do it with mostly newer ones. And that's no shade to itch.io or GOG, both of whom have a lot of my money. Like an alarming amount of my money.
But what was probably not the primary, secondary or even tertiary problem were the game developers. They had costs on the balance sheet, but it is my unreserved opinion that they were not the main reason why Epic was losing money. No, just a quick way to put on a tourniquet. Even if these people cost about half of the lawsuit against Apple. These are the people who were and should still be making you money. It was they who created a cultural hit so big that Quentin Tarantino made a short film about it.
Yes, some fans are aging out of the game while younger players are moving to other platforms like Roblox. Yes, Epic made some bad business decisions. But people who are screwed up aren't generally the ones who made bad decisions. A tale as old as time. I don't even know why it's worth repeating. But it's almost cruel, or at the very least deeply, deeply thoughtless, to be the person making these top-down decisions to benevolently but generally bless those who now have to fight everyone else on LinkedIn for the scraps.
Do you really want to help the people you dumped? Pick up the phone and start calling some CEO friends and pulling out a bunch of favors. But you'd better start because there's about a thousand people who can't make a rent soon. At worst, at least they have a comforting tweet to print and eat.
- Released
-
September 26, 2017
- ESRB
-
T for Teen – Diverse Content: Discretion, In-Game Purchases, User Interaction
