Epic Games, the developer and publisher behind Fortnite, is receiving backlash from game devs and music fans after acquiring the popular music platform Bandcamp and flipping the company to Songtradr who immediately turned around and fired a large number of the staff. Bandcamp is beloved among independent music circles for being one of the best ways to support smaller artists, and with many calling this move the death of the platform, it seems like Epic is deserving of all the negative comments it’s receiving.
Early last year the massive developer Epic Games acquired the music distribution platform Bandcamp. There were fears after the acquisition in 2022 that Bandcamp falling into the hands of a large corporate entity would ultimately undermine the purpose of the platform, and a lot of those fears have proven valid recently, which only further fuels the rage towards Epic as it stated during the buyout last year that, “Bandcamp will play an important role in Epic’s vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more.”
Epic Games Bandcamp Layoffs
Bandcamp’s worker union Bandcamp United recently took to X (Twitter) to express sorrow and frustration at the actions taken by both Epic Games and Songtradr. Songtradr has yet to recognize the union and the recent layoffs at Bandcamp’s Oakland office very conveniently included the entire union leadership.
Many voices from the outside have been expressing anger and resentment in reaction to these layoffs like Brandon Sheffield, the director at Necrosoft Games, who wrote “Epic bought a profitable business, decided they needed to cut costs, and nearly immediately started gutting that profitable business before selling it off to vultures. Bandcamp is the only place where smaller musical artists make any money.”
Bandcamp is popular among underground music creators who consider it a more artist-friendly alternative to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music which notoriously give artists very little in the way of royalties. In an era of the music industry where the average musician is making less money than ever, Bandcamp has been a bastion of hope for smaller artists. For independent labels, it’s been a format for distributing and promoting music that might not be as widely seen or accessible otherwise. It’s also a platform that has helped launch indie darlings like Car Seat Headrest, Parannoul, and JPEGMAFIA.
With that in mind, the idea that this beloved music platform has just been gutted by a corporation that specifically stated, “Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy,” is absolutely worthy of harsh criticism. If this move is any kind of sign of what’s to come in Bandcamp’s future, it will likely be anything but a fair and open platform dedicated to creators.
This whole situation is also a glaring signal of the future for any company Epic Games attempts to sweep up as it expands. There is no interest in preserving the thriving community of a profitable business. This is only the story of a big business concerned with nothing more than pushing the line forever upwards, and one of the last music websites actually taking the musician into consideration is being assassinated as corporate fodder to achieve that goal.
