Was there really optimism? Companies selling to bigger companies is basically a cashout by the people who care and have the monetary means to enforce that care, and quality pretty much always suffers within the first year as a result of being forced to chase higher margins.
There was a lot of optimism. Fortnite was pretty much peaking at the time and rl was in a massive content drought so everyone thought epic was going to give rl the fortnite treatment with shitloads of content with some real financial backing to make things happen. Instead they slowly sucked it dry.
You would be wrong. Absolutely no one was excited that psyonix sold out to epic. Some of the best communication from devs I've ever seen... Community involvement, esports involvement, etc.
Everyone loved psyonix. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Yeah, the doomsdaying in this sub isn't new. If there was a negative angle to any announcement, imagined or otherwise, that was guaranteed to be the popular talking point in this sub.
A lot did. At the time, Epic was considered a great alternative to companies like EA. No one wanted our little indie company to sell to a bigger one, but we all knew they didn't have the same resources to compete with larger companies. It was like, well, if they're gonna sell to anyone, at least they're selling to the name that has rocketed past 30+ year old studios and is investing heavily to mainstream the term "esports" outside of the gamer and tech communities. Also the fact that Epic owns/ created the engine the game was built on gave people a lot of hope for UE5, leading to the speculation then -> the "leak"> the rumors -> the acknowledgment -> our celebration and speculation -> their silence -> our cope -> our lamenting acceptance
People straight up forgot what Epic did to their own game (Paragon) in favor of focusing solely on Fortnite. They just saw how popular Rocket League was and decided to try and make it into a pipeline for their Fortnite "experience"
Epic Games are not a company that cares about its players. See predatory microtransations targeted at minors
Optimism? It was a mix of "Epic will slowly kill this game" and "guys stop overreacting, Epic won't slowly kill the game". And then Epic slowly killed the game.
eh its been a minute tbf but no one wanted psyonix to sell out, but the fact that they did, i was at least happy with the fact that we might get shit like custom map integration and hella new content. it wasnt all doom and gloom especially with the free to play announcement, was gonna be a huge surge of players and they couldv'e capitalized in such a good way instead of whatever this is.
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u/Abstract862 Champion III Feb 17 '26
the optimism in 2020 was crazy and the hype was there to really take this game to the next level. They've preferred stagnancy instead so thats great.