Epic Games, creator of the popular game Fortnite, has announced new layoffsthat will affect several of its employees.
Today, CEO Tim Sweeney announced that the company is reducing its workforce, laying off more than 1,000 employees. “This layoff, along with cost savings of more than $500 million from contracting, marketing, and closing some open positions, puts us in a more stable position,” he wrote.
In 2023, the company had laid off another 800 people.
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According to Sweeney, the cuts are due to a number of issues that have plagued the live-service gaming in recent years, such as increased competition and reduced consumer spending. However, he also admitted that some of Epic Games' problems are specifically related to Fortnite.
“Despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we have faced challenges in consistently delivering the magic of Fortnite with each season. We are in the early stages of returning to mobile and optimizing Fortnite for the billions of smartphones worldwide. As industry pioneers, we have faced many attacks in a battle that is only in its early stages, aiming to bear fruit for us and all developers,” he explained.
Sweeney also noted that today's layoffs are not related to AI. Affected employees will receive a severance package of four months of salary and, for employees in the US, six months of paid healthcare.
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There were signs that things weren't going well earlier this month when Epic raised the price of V-bucks — Fortnite's in-game — simply saying that "the costs of running Fortnite have gone up a lot and we're raising prices to help pay the bills."
Layoffs at Epic Games and other gaming companies
The cuts at Epic are just the latest in a series of losses in the live-service games space. The past few weeks have been particularly tough: free-to-play shooter Highguard shut down earlier this month after studio layoffs. EA laid off an undisclosed number of developers working on Battlefield 6, despite boasting about the “biggest launch in franchise history.”
Riot thecreator of League of Legends, has reduced staff at its new fighting game 2kXO.
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Remedy has released the final update for its troubled team-based shooter FBC: Firebreak, though the studio plans to keep the game alive (at least for now).
“Today’s market conditions are the most extreme we’ve seen since our early days, with massive industry disruption accompanied by massive opportunities for the companies that emerge victorious on the other side,” Sweeney said in his note. “This is what we aim to do for our players, and we intend to bring other like-minded developers in the industry with us on the journey to build an increasingly open and vibrant future of entertainment.”
