Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: 14

Quoting: Cybolic

Quoting: 14Companies are for-profit, ya know? Go to church if you want more of a family feel. Companies are not your family.

I'm afraid I have bad news [External Link] for you....

Sorta funny, but you're not claiming they're for profit, are you?

Looks to me like these churches have been actively gathering a lot more wealth than they spend. Isn't that what you'd call "making a profit"? Churches are not treated as business entities so obviously we don't apply the for-profit label. Not even to the sort of Christian offshoots that preach the prosperity gospel and exist to enrich their charismatic leaders.

Quoting: 14Regardless, if you don't like my example, my point still stands. Think of a different example I guess.

So if the point of the bit Cybolic quoted wasn't that churches are an ethical counterbalance to corporate greed, maybe it was that we can't hold businesses and their leaders to any ethical standard at all? That we should just accept that anything goes in the name of profit?

Any way you spin it, your point wasn't great. In my opinion, obviously.

I wouldn't agree with the extremes you described either. Extremes are never good. Without writing something very long winded, I'm trying to say that we can't expect CEO's to love their employees like parent-child or close relative relationships. The other extreme would be complete disregard of human life. Something in between can happen.

If Epic was able to avoid their current financial problem, it wouldn't have been out of love, it would have been from smart business decisions with the goal of self sustenance. Most employees would be happy and comfortable knowing their company had a sturdy future.

If you lay off one of your two employees (50% of workforce) from a cookie stand because customers started going to a competitor, are you evil now that you can't afford to pay wages? As the owner of the business, should you take out loans and go into debt to keep your employee count?

I get that there are more reasons people don't like Epic. I'm focusing only on layoff situations.

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Quoting: Cybolic

Quoting: 14Companies are for-profit, ya know? Go to church if you want more of a family feel. Companies are not your family.

I'm afraid I have bad news [External Link] for you....

Sorta funny, but you're not claiming they're for profit, are you?

Regardless, if you don't like my example, my point still stands. Think of a different example I guess.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: 14Last time I tried to play competitive twitch shooters like CS and CoD, which feel super arcade and depend on animal reflexes, it was simply frustrating and a bad time. Why make myself angry in my free time?

But now that there's a refresh, I will test the waters once more. We'll see....

any competitive game requires a player to outspeed an opponent, what did you expect from a first person shooter?

I've been better at other FPS. FWIW, back in the old days of BF1942, I was top 1% of the world. I can get MVP in other shooters when I'm "in the zone." CS never felt worth the adrenaline frenzy to me though.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, it's like when a company buys another one for their IP... then fires off all the engineers that created said IP. It's dumb as shit. Buy a company for their talent... IP comes and goes...

Trademarks and patents should, IMO, have an expiration time if the owner ceases to produce anything from them. In the digital world, it's hard to think of a fair and practical length of time. 20 years? 30? 50 feels ancient for digital content. Less than 20 feels a little unfair to me.

It wouldn't solve companies buying smaller ones for their IP, but it might help a little.

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CEO's do get sacked though. In this case, we're also talking about the founder who still has most shares in a private company. He is at the helm. Think of Apple and Microsoft similarly.

At this point, I think any major leader in the US, corporate or not, will get heat from this forum. Next time there's an article like this one, the convo will be repeated and people will think they're holier-than-thou when they've never had to handle such large decisions and risk.

Companies are for-profit, ya know? Go to church if you want more of a family feel. Companies are not your family.

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Ashamedly, I never got far into the first game, thus I can't convince myself to buy the sequel.

Despite negative aspects that can come from Unreal Engine, I expect the aesthetics will be more attractive this time around.

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Last time I tried to play competitive twitch shooters like CS and CoD, which feel super arcade and depend on animal reflexes, it was simply frustrating and a bad time. Why make myself angry in my free time?

But now that there's a refresh, I will test the waters once more. We'll see....

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I have to be anti-mainstream when it comes to tech, so I use other SBC's. I don't tinker constantly; I just have a handful that act as micro servers in the house. I already have an extra that rarely gets used, so no need for another.

It's cool to see the popularity continue.

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When I saw "Push to Talk" in the trailer, I thought it would have multiplayer. Looks like not. That's a bummer. This looks like it would be interesting for a longer period than Zomboid for me, but not something I'd play by myself.

I play RimWorld by myself and have a lot of hours. I can't exactly put my finger on what makes me willing to play by myself.

Maybe it's the zombies or the horde style gameplay that I don't care to do on my own. I can only think of co-op games in those styles that I play.

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Quoting: StoneColdSpider

Quoting: constThey could have just gone to fair competition practices and turning their store into something viable, but laying of people is just so much easier.

Bingo.......

As someone who has worked in mega large soulless corporations for over 2 decades........ They will always...... ALWAYS go the easy route........ Even if it blows up and costs them more in the long term....... The board and the CEO will just leave with their golden handshakes and someone else will come in with some other lazy solution to the current mess and the cycle continues.......

For example....... one company I worked for wanted software for a certain application....... Instead of getting the already employed company software engineers to make the software...... They scouted around and found another company that was making software that would fit their needs....... They then bought that company...... Then proceeded to fire everyone from the newly bought company......... AND then found out the software wasnt anywhere near finished and wasnt useable at all........

The CEO left with a multi million dollarydoo golden handshake and a new CEO came in and their solution was just to scrap the entirety of the code we had and go scouting for a third party to make the software........

And the kicker is that they didnt use the companies own software engineers because....... "The company did not see any value in getting them to make the software"........

I use to like reading Dilbert...... But hes now to close to reality to be funny........

Sorry for the off topic rant...... But this kind of stuff really *BEEPS* me off..........

I think your comment on being mega large and soulless has nothing to do with it. Is Amazon mega large? Absolutely. Do they do the same thing you described? No, they don't. Amazon does push existing people to do new and hard things. I bet you would still say Amazon is soulless. I'm not here to convince you otherwise, however my point is what you're highlighting is related to smart or stupid business decisions, not goodwill to humanity.

When I see news like this, it just reminds me it's how our economy incentives are for companies. You must grow forever! Well, once the market is saturated and you can't attract more customers to your products, you acquire smaller companies, their products, and their customers. Yay for the financial books. But, eventually, the bubble bursts and you have to reset.

The video game industry is of course entertainment, which is lower on the priority list when times get tough. People spend less on games when grocery bills go up, ya know? During Covid, entertainers were like the only non-essential workers if you recall.

Epic Games is a private company, so they don't have to be transparent about their finances. That aspect is a little shame because employees could have seen the writing on the wall and either chose to ignore it or plan ahead.

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