Today we’re laying off over 1000 Epic employees. I’m sorry we’re here again. The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we’re spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles puts us in a more stable place.
Some of the challenges we’re facing are industry-wide challenges: slower growth, weaker spending, and tougher cost economics; current consoles selling less than last generation’s; and games competing for time against other increasingly-engaging forms of entertainment.
And some of our challenges are unique to Epic. Despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season; we’re only in the early stages of returning to mobile and optimizing Fortnite for the world’s billions of smartphones; and in being the industry’s vanguard we have taken a lot of bullets in a battle which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers.
Since it’s a thing now, I should note that the layoffs aren’t related to AI. To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can.
What we now need to do is clear: build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events; accelerate developer tools with greater stability and capability as we evolve from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6. And we’ll be kicking off the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year.
This isn’t our first time being here. Epic survived upheavals in 1990’s with the move from 2D to 3D with Unreal 1; in the 2000’s building console games with Gears of War; and in 2012 moving to online gaming with Paragon and Fortnite. Each time, we rebuilt our foundations and earned a renewed leadership position.
Market conditions today are the most extreme we’ve seen since those early days, with massive upheaval in the industry accompanied by massive opportunity for the companies that come out as winners on the other side. That’s what we’re aiming to do for our players, and we aim to bring other like-minded developers in the industry along on the journey to build an increasingly open and vibrant future of entertainment together.
At Epic, we pride ourselves in only hiring the industry’s best, so it is very painful to part with so many talented people. The folks impacted by the layoffs will receive a severance package that includes at least four months of base pay, with more based on tenure. We’re also extending Epic-paid healthcare coverage.
For example, in the U.S., they’ll receive paid coverage for 6 months. We’ll also accelerate their stock options vesting through January 2027 and extend equity exercise options for up to two years.
We’ll have a company meeting Thursday to talk about the roadmap in more detail.
and in being the industry’s vanguard we have taken a lot of bullets in a battle which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers.
Competition is good and I appreciate having the Epic Games Store and their freebies, but after ~8 years it’s still barebones. Only recently did they get around to implementing gifting games.
They could have earned so much community goodwill with making an official launcher for Linux and providing better Easy Anti Cheat support. Could’ve easily taken out a chunk of Steam’s playerbase on Valve’s home turf, the Steam Deck.
While desperately trying to stay relevant in a game genre that died 6 years ago. The golden goose is dead and they are still trying to crush golden eggs out of its dead carcass. They will never realize that the egg crushing machine they invented is the one responsible for it’s death.
Since it’s a thing now, I should note that the layoffs aren’t related to AI.
As shitty as the situation is, I can respect the fact that they are being somewhat honest about it, as opposed to hiding behind a scapegoat like most other tech companies. (Though they still blamed it on something external / outside of their control 🙃)
I believe it, I think it has more to do with Fortnite slowly moving into irrelevancy at the same time they were spending money on partnerships that the demographic doesn’t care about.
The guy is quite a good communicator. Would have still been nice to know how much he cuts his own salary and that of the rest of management. But I assume they just fire some managers, since they are having less employees to manage.
Fortnite is still printing money. On its own, it’s enough to sustain the company, so they very much didn’t “have to” lay off any employees to remain profitable.
Yeah, but at the same time they stopped making new games except for one. Thousand people (yes, many of them probably wouldn’t have been game devs) could have made at least ten new games. It probably wouldn’t have been bad for their engine either to have multiple internal teams trying to make multiple kinds of games.
Jazz Jackrabbit could do well. I could see it pivoting to a platform-adjacent genre pretty well, with MTX (since that seems to be Epic’s bread & butter), with like a PvE race mode or something, giving higher rewards depending on clear time, a season of trees monthly, etc.
They aren’t anymore. Those four devs who worked on UT4 were since shifted over to other projects, i.e. Fortnite.
Sweeny also shut down the UT series for good, but Epic had given OldUnreal permission to bring about full game installers for Unreal, UT99, and UT 2004.
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There’s nothing I hate more than “folks” being used by corporate heads while they’re fucking you.
Lol the reason he doesn’t mention any other country is that EVERY OTHER COUNTRY HAS FUCKING UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.
Fuckin dork.
Aside from the fight they put up against the App Store and Play Store duopoly and granting fans permission to distribute a Unreal Tournament 2004 launcher, Epic has taken the “PR disaster” route at every step of the way.
Competition is good and I appreciate having the Epic Games Store and their freebies, but after ~8 years it’s still barebones. Only recently did they get around to implementing gifting games.
They could have earned so much community goodwill with making an official launcher for Linux and providing better Easy Anti Cheat support. Could’ve easily taken out a chunk of Steam’s playerbase on Valve’s home turf, the Steam Deck.
Lmao “Hey guys we had this happen multiple times already in the past few decades and we never learned from our mistakes there.”
Epic’s entire business model in the past decade has been to copy others and see what sticks.
He could have paid each of the fired employees 100k for 10 years and still have several billion dollars left.
Exactly With that amount of money - make them create something new with the chance of it begin successful.
No, we will oversaturate already dying gamedev labor market with top notch professionals.
While desperately trying to stay relevant in a game genre that died 6 years ago. The golden goose is dead and they are still trying to crush golden eggs out of its dead carcass. They will never realize that the egg crushing machine they invented is the one responsible for it’s death.
As shitty as the situation is, I can respect the fact that they are being somewhat honest about it, as opposed to hiding behind a scapegoat like most other tech companies. (Though they still blamed it on something external / outside of their control 🙃)
The fact that you believe this lie is funny.
I believe it, I think it has more to do with Fortnite slowly moving into irrelevancy at the same time they were spending money on partnerships that the demographic doesn’t care about.
Care to elaborate? CMIIW, but if I interprete this comment right, that
is a lie, that means that:
they truly believe that AI can their jobs, hence the layoff?
CMIIW? IDKWPUAA
Fuck you, Sweeney.
The guy is quite a good communicator. Would have still been nice to know how much he cuts his own salary and that of the rest of management. But I assume they just fire some managers, since they are having less employees to manage.
Epic has employees?
If they fired all the epic ones, that must mean they kept all the mid employees.
Maybe it’s all legendary employees now
T: minus-6-months and counting until Stock Buyback initiation…
Epic is a private company, they don’t have any public stock to buy back.
I wonder how much the C Suite’s compensation package shrunk by.
-1 x (projected savings) ÷ 2
I mean not a fan of epic but damn that sucks for the developers that the leadership had let things stagnate until massive layoffs had to happen.
“Had to happen” surely.
Fortnite is still printing money. On its own, it’s enough to sustain the company, so they very much didn’t “have to” lay off any employees to remain profitable.
An Epstein club member
Oooh, nice wanted poster!
More like unwanted poster
Imagine that dumb lizard head spilling its cold blood all over a wall.
I don’t like the guy but do we really need to stoop this low?
Who could have foreseen that putting all your eggs into one basket was risky? Not this Epic leadership.
It’s felt like fortnight has been keeping epic alive for nearly a decade. 10 - 15 year olds that were playing fortnight and buying with mom and dad’s $ are grown up. We’re all suffering under the boot of late stage capitalism and stagflation. 20-24 year olds experiencing 7.7% unemployment, if they have a college degree. Those numbers get worse the less education young people have. Young people that play this game don’t have disposable income to drop on digital bullshit when they are trying to survive. Avg unemployment is about 4.5% and for highschool kids and kids working through college the unemployment rate is 13%.
They’ve tried to.
They have Unreal Engine, Epic Games Store, and they tried transitioning Fortnite into an SDK for other live service games to try and take a cut there.
But like if Google Ads or Search dropped off quickly they’d have to drop their other products too, because that’s their revenue driver.
Yeah, but at the same time they stopped making new games except for one. Thousand people (yes, many of them probably wouldn’t have been game devs) could have made at least ten new games. It probably wouldn’t have been bad for their engine either to have multiple internal teams trying to make multiple kinds of games.
1000 is just such arbitrary bullshit. And how many does that leave? How many are/were working on season passes???
None of that talented bunch couldn’t have pivoted onto Unreal Tournament? Or some other fortnite spin-off?
I feel like a new Jazz the Jackrabbit or Jill of the Jungle would have a better chance of making money than trying Unreal Tournament again lol
Jazz Jackrabbit could do well. I could see it pivoting to a platform-adjacent genre pretty well, with MTX (since that seems to be Epic’s bread & butter), with like a PvE race mode or something, giving higher rewards depending on clear time, a season of trees monthly, etc.
UT 2004 is coming back, and better since the OldUnreal full game installer is live (thanks to Epic giving them permission to do this).
Are they even still working on UT? Last I checked it’s been public alpha and looked really good. That was close to 10 years ago this point.
They aren’t anymore. Those four devs who worked on UT4 were since shifted over to other projects, i.e. Fortnite.
Sweeny also shut down the UT series for good, but Epic had given OldUnreal permission to bring about full game installers for Unreal, UT99, and UT 2004.