Games

Monkey's paw: Google buys it

I might be jaded, but I'd wager that whoever buys it, is going to be worse than having Epic as a rich daddy who is focused on and making money through his core business and doesn't really know what to do with Bandcamp. Entities that buy it are almost certainly going to squeeze harder at the expense of user experience.

I dunno, company that sells digital content for young people buys company that sells other digital content for young people. I can see the synergy there. Epic Games Store and Bandcamp aren't that far apart.

Now it'll go to some private equity vampire who will really ruin it

Narrator: No dodgy investors... Yet.

They also bought 7digital.com this year, which is a site I sometimes buy MP3s from since they have a better selection of mainstream record-label stuff than Bandcamp (no Amazon MP3s here in Canada).

Like other commenters here, I’m hopeful. Epic owning Bandcamp was pretty scary. They never really answered questions about it and a lot of folks were worried it could have gone the Epic Store route. Epic might honestly have sucked up all the data and sold it off already, though. We don’t know what the future will hold; I feel like no Epic is at worst a neutral position. Songtradr is at least in the music business and isn’t headed by Tim Sweeney.

People are losing their jobs. Their families are going to be in serious distress. I don't wish layoffs on anyone.

How does this help Godot?

I think this might have more to do with the beating that Epic took from Apple in court. The 2021 decision in favor of Apple, of their lawsuit for anti-competitive behavior was upheld this year. That was not cheap to litigate that and was a major loss for Epic.

I think the Bandcamp sell off is a good indicator of all of this. Epic obtained Bandcamp in March 2022, to explicitly have their IAP system integrated into it. Google shut them down and told them they would start collecting the 30% usual due. Epic filed suit and Google gave them an exception for the time being with the agreement that 10% would be held in escrow until the conclusion of the trail. With many of the arguments in the Apple case similar to Google's case, I'm pretty sure Epic sees the loss coming from a mile away.

All in all, what I think can be drawn from this. Epic made a big bet on "their store" and that's fading away with mobile devices locking people into a marketplace that is "distinctly not Epic". While putting such a bet wouldn't normally kill a company, Epic sextupled down on it and I think how hard they went for "their marketplace" is what's done them in.

SVB has nothing to do with this, it's crazy that people think that SVB is a cause and not a symptom.

I think you’re thinking of GarageBand.