Video game Company, Epic Games has announced the acquisition of internet music company, Bandcamp, with the independent music storefront maintaining its independent operation under Epic Games, but will gain benefits of Epic Games’ backend services.
Epic Games while announcing the acquisition yesterday, March 2, 2022 said that Bandcamp would “keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community” but use Epic’s resources to expand internationally and continue adding new features.
In a blog post, Epic noted 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’.
Bandcamp co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond, in an announcement affirming the acquisition by Epic Games, stressed that the core deal for artists won’t change in the near future.
In his words: “The products and services you depend on aren’t going anywhere, we’ll continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model,” Diamond wrote. “You’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site.”
“YOU’LL STILL HAVE THE SAME CONTROL OVER HOW YOU OFFER YOUR MUSIC”
The Bandcamp CEO added that Epic and Bandcamp will work together “behind the scenes” to push development of merchandising and payment options, mobile apps, and livestreaming, among other features.
Epic Games in its description of Bandcamp says the music company is committed to ‘fair and open platforms’ a subtle support for the gaming company in its ongoing legal tussle with Apple and Google whose payment models it’s described as a threat as it expands its gaming offerings to a larger social “metaverse.”
Epic games had taken the offensive after it filed a lawsuit against Google over the latter’s decision to extract cross-platform game, Fortnite from its app store. Google countersued Epic Games accusing the gaming company of violating its contract by romancing an additional payment system that sought to overtake the Play Store’s payment systems and its 30 percent in-app purchase commission.
Epic also sued Apple, accusing the American multinational technology company of operating a monopoly over apps on iOS apps, while demanding for changes that would effectively force the iPhone maker to take a smaller percentage of all the transactions that go through that store. Epic with the instigated litigation sought to change how Apple operates its very lucrative App Store.
The judge had ruled in favor of Apple in 9 out of 10 counts Epic brought forward, with both companies appealing the counts they lost.
Epic Games filed a notice of appeal against the judgment, with its opening brief saying “would upend established principles of antitrust law and undermine sound antitrust policy.”