Line goes up is also not enough anymore. The slope of line going up is most important. You made 10bn last year, but only 9 bn this year - this means time for some layoffs to please "the market". I have no way to explain this world we live in.
"The line" referenced by "line goes up" is typically understood to be revenue or profit, so if you made 10bn last year but only 9bn this year, "the line" actually went down even if you have more money at the end of this year than at the end of last year.
They just hiked VBucks prices too... conveniently after they "won" their settlement with Google that includes a full on anti-disparagement clause against Google but fully allows them to keep on attacking Apple as much as they wish.
It's really strange too. I thought these settlements and 3rd party app stores would lower prices, but prices continue to go up! And now as prices are going up, Epic is also laying off workers? Hmmm.
You're right they don't have a board and definitely weren't punished by both the FTC/DOJ for anti-trust and manipulative business practices.
Just a small mom and pop shop that somehow seems to elude themselves from the typical braindead MBA playbook of ruining lives to justify their shitty business decisions.
Hopefully the beloved indie game studio can navigate these waters successfully! Lots of sharks out there that like to rat fuck the commons for personal gain, wouldn't want that to happen to the gaming company that helped normalize gambling to children.
Market in this context doesn't necessarily mean the publicly traded markets, it can mean the investor market (and their ability to raise), the financial market (their ability to get loans or other financial products), all of these things are dependent on their overall company performance, which can be manipulated in the short term by mass firing 1k employees so some executive can hit a KPI and get their bonus. Ya know, sociopathic stuff like that.
I also don't understand, this is just a failure from Tim Sweeney being blamed on external factors. With that amount of money and the IPs they own he should have been able to keep the company going but didn't.
They've been pull about that much in per year since 2019 AFAIK.
I really hope this one have knock ons for Unreal Engine or lead to Unity like licensing. Their indie grants are also quite generous.