1000 layoffs represents around 25% of Epic's total workforce.
BoredPositron
I hate that Tim got lucky two times with initiatives of employees that went against his will. I hope epic falters.
xvxvx
As far as layoff packages go, this is pretty good. 6 months health insurance and at least 4 months pay. The last 2 layoffs I experienced were just 1 week pay for every year you worked there and zero extended health benefits. And they made sure to note that they didn’t have to pay out anything at all, legally. The wording of the announcement is better than the usual corporate non-speak too.
CodingJeebus
> 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. Layoffs really, really suck, but at least there's not a whiff of the "we're doubling down on AI to boost productivity" cop out that we're seeing across the industry. It's sad that a company being honest about a difficult decision is praiseworthy these days, but here we are.
pram
I’ve wondered how much money was burned on Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store. I know a lot of people who would religiously download the “free games” but never spent a cent.
doughnutstracks
>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. https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/todays-layoffs
edwardsrobbie
This one is sad for me as a Fortnite player and someone who lives in the town where Epic Games is headquartered.
rustyhancock
Quite stunned that Fortnites 5bn per year isn't enough to keep them going. They've been pull about that much in per year since 2019 AFAIK. I really hope this one have knock ons for Unreal Engine or lead to Unity like licensing. Their indie grants are also quite generous.
OrionSubnet
Another case of reactive management leaving employees to bear the consequences of executive decisions. Forcing 16% job cuts despite years of financial warnings says a lot.
bakugo
For context, they recently increased the prices of the game's cosmetics significantly to, and I quote, "help pay the bills" [1]. Apparently, that wasn't enough, and the billions of dollars in revenue the game makes every year are simply too little to keep the lights on. So now they're laying off over a thousand people and cutting several official gamemodes, so they can continue paying hundreds of millions to the creators of AI slop modes like Steal the Brainrot [2]. It's becoming increasingly clear that Epic Games is a dysfunctional company that simply stumbled onto a golden goose by sheer luck, and now that the goose can't lay eggs any faster to keep the line going up, they're panicking. [1] https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-v-bucks-price-increas... [2] https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-developers-will-soon-...
MisterTea
There are three other submissions in the queue and likely more on this. I know someone in Epic and they told me that its no secret inside Epic that Roblox is killing them. Why? He told me a story where a neighbors kid came by and wanted to play Roblox but he told the kid he didn't have Roblox. The child replied "It's easy! I'll show you!" and this 8 year old sat at his PC, downloaded a few MB client, signs in, selects a game and is playing within minutes. The game was a brain dead platform jumping game where you jump to the top of a tower. No enemies. No items. No anything. Just get to the top. Yay. At one point the kid fell down and the game offered to move him back to where he was for $3. Yup a fucking game hit a kid up for hard cash. The people who makes these games are child predators. Scum really. Epics problem is Unreal can't be easily deployed like Roblox. You want to play Lego star-wars? You need to first download the base Lego game of 30GB then the 20GB Star Wars pack. A Roblox user just downloads a small client, signs in and is ready to play a stupid simple game that isn't 50+ GB. Unfortunately most of those games are not games but attention stealers that entice users to spend real money on NOTHING. Shame that everything has been boiled down to an attention and money milking scam.
fidotron
With the downturn in Fortnite (and with it the dream of Fortnite as a platform), and apparent failure of Meta Horizon (at least on the Quest) . . . does that mean the entire concept of a 3D metaverse type UI is dead for another generation?
4corners4sides
Roblox is the elephant in the room here which fills the niche for freemium, fun 3D experiences that run on basically any platform or device.
jeffreportmill1
The CEO is worth 7B+. 1000 employees at 100k/yr would cost him 100M - less than his net worth fluctuates on any given day and only 20% of other costs savings they have identified. Executives care little about the stakeholders: the employees, the customers, the community. It's their company, too. They only care about investors and themselves. People who "own" pay a lower tax rate than those that "work". Let's fix that and make things great again.
Tsiklon
Fortnite is 9 years old this year. Epic brought in biblical amounts of money from just this one property over this time. Where and how did they spend this money?
Ekaros
500 millions in savings? They seem to have been burning lot of money. And relying on single game seems to not be working. Also I wonder if their low cut on EGS is doing part of these problems...
Ekaros
500M in savings seems like huge amount. Just how unstable is their income? And just what else have they been burning money on to look at that sort of cost saving goal.
animal531
And yet somehow the stats show that most likely 2026 is easily on track to be a bumper gaming year, surpassing 2025. Revenue wise they might be down from the 6bn in 2025 to somewhere in the mid 5's, so might as well get rid of 1000 employees while handing out bigger bonuses to senior staff.
ivraatiems
I am not Tim Sweeney's biggest fan. I know he and his company have many detractors. Please read this comment with that in mind, because while I don't love them, I also think that as layoff announcements go, this is good. No beating around the bush, explicitly NOT blaming AI, taking responsibility, taking care of those impacted. If you are gonna do it, this is as good as it can get. I think the reality is that Epic got big because of Fortnite but nothing lasts forever. They would have been better off building a war chest and pulling a Valve (though I'm sure they'd hate hearing it that way): going silent and making whatever they wanted for a while, and then trying to repeat the cycle, rebuilding the chest, and then going on. Video games are the exact opposite of Infinite Growth Forever. People get bored and move on. Meanwhile, Epic has many stable and valuable businesses - Unreal, the game store, etc. - which are perfectly capable of sustaining a sizable company. Just not one as sizable as Epic is. The best case for them is they figure that out, and manage to make a sustainable go of it doing that.
mvdtnz
It's a very straight forward letter without all of the usual fluff, which I appreciate. Bit it's concerning how much Epic still seems to be hanging their hat on Fortnite. Trends come and go and it seems unlikely to me that Fortnite will grow significantly in the future. It had its moment, they should be focusing on the next big thing.
Related Discussions
Found 5 related stories in 49.6ms across 3,471 title embeddings via pgvector HNSW
Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
adrianhon
1000 layoffs represents around 25% of Epic's total workforce.
BoredPositron
I hate that Tim got lucky two times with initiatives of employees that went against his will. I hope epic falters.
xvxvx
As far as layoff packages go, this is pretty good. 6 months health insurance and at least 4 months pay. The last 2 layoffs I experienced were just 1 week pay for every year you worked there and zero extended health benefits. And they made sure to note that they didn’t have to pay out anything at all, legally. The wording of the announcement is better than the usual corporate non-speak too.
CodingJeebus
> 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. Layoffs really, really suck, but at least there's not a whiff of the "we're doubling down on AI to boost productivity" cop out that we're seeing across the industry. It's sad that a company being honest about a difficult decision is praiseworthy these days, but here we are.
pram
I’ve wondered how much money was burned on Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store. I know a lot of people who would religiously download the “free games” but never spent a cent.
doughnutstracks
>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. https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/todays-layoffs
edwardsrobbie
This one is sad for me as a Fortnite player and someone who lives in the town where Epic Games is headquartered.
rustyhancock
Quite stunned that Fortnites 5bn per year isn't enough to keep them going. They've been pull about that much in per year since 2019 AFAIK. I really hope this one have knock ons for Unreal Engine or lead to Unity like licensing. Their indie grants are also quite generous.
OrionSubnet
Another case of reactive management leaving employees to bear the consequences of executive decisions. Forcing 16% job cuts despite years of financial warnings says a lot.
bakugo
For context, they recently increased the prices of the game's cosmetics significantly to, and I quote, "help pay the bills" [1]. Apparently, that wasn't enough, and the billions of dollars in revenue the game makes every year are simply too little to keep the lights on. So now they're laying off over a thousand people and cutting several official gamemodes, so they can continue paying hundreds of millions to the creators of AI slop modes like Steal the Brainrot [2]. It's becoming increasingly clear that Epic Games is a dysfunctional company that simply stumbled onto a golden goose by sheer luck, and now that the goose can't lay eggs any faster to keep the line going up, they're panicking. [1] https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-v-bucks-price-increas... [2] https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-developers-will-soon-...
MisterTea
There are three other submissions in the queue and likely more on this. I know someone in Epic and they told me that its no secret inside Epic that Roblox is killing them. Why? He told me a story where a neighbors kid came by and wanted to play Roblox but he told the kid he didn't have Roblox. The child replied "It's easy! I'll show you!" and this 8 year old sat at his PC, downloaded a few MB client, signs in, selects a game and is playing within minutes. The game was a brain dead platform jumping game where you jump to the top of a tower. No enemies. No items. No anything. Just get to the top. Yay. At one point the kid fell down and the game offered to move him back to where he was for $3. Yup a fucking game hit a kid up for hard cash. The people who makes these games are child predators. Scum really. Epics problem is Unreal can't be easily deployed like Roblox. You want to play Lego star-wars? You need to first download the base Lego game of 30GB then the 20GB Star Wars pack. A Roblox user just downloads a small client, signs in and is ready to play a stupid simple game that isn't 50+ GB. Unfortunately most of those games are not games but attention stealers that entice users to spend real money on NOTHING. Shame that everything has been boiled down to an attention and money milking scam.
fidotron
With the downturn in Fortnite (and with it the dream of Fortnite as a platform), and apparent failure of Meta Horizon (at least on the Quest) . . . does that mean the entire concept of a 3D metaverse type UI is dead for another generation?
4corners4sides
Roblox is the elephant in the room here which fills the niche for freemium, fun 3D experiences that run on basically any platform or device.
jeffreportmill1
The CEO is worth 7B+. 1000 employees at 100k/yr would cost him 100M - less than his net worth fluctuates on any given day and only 20% of other costs savings they have identified. Executives care little about the stakeholders: the employees, the customers, the community. It's their company, too. They only care about investors and themselves. People who "own" pay a lower tax rate than those that "work". Let's fix that and make things great again.
Tsiklon
Fortnite is 9 years old this year. Epic brought in biblical amounts of money from just this one property over this time. Where and how did they spend this money?
Ekaros
500 millions in savings? They seem to have been burning lot of money. And relying on single game seems to not be working. Also I wonder if their low cut on EGS is doing part of these problems...
Ekaros
500M in savings seems like huge amount. Just how unstable is their income? And just what else have they been burning money on to look at that sort of cost saving goal.
animal531
And yet somehow the stats show that most likely 2026 is easily on track to be a bumper gaming year, surpassing 2025. Revenue wise they might be down from the 6bn in 2025 to somewhere in the mid 5's, so might as well get rid of 1000 employees while handing out bigger bonuses to senior staff.
ivraatiems
I am not Tim Sweeney's biggest fan. I know he and his company have many detractors. Please read this comment with that in mind, because while I don't love them, I also think that as layoff announcements go, this is good. No beating around the bush, explicitly NOT blaming AI, taking responsibility, taking care of those impacted. If you are gonna do it, this is as good as it can get. I think the reality is that Epic got big because of Fortnite but nothing lasts forever. They would have been better off building a war chest and pulling a Valve (though I'm sure they'd hate hearing it that way): going silent and making whatever they wanted for a while, and then trying to repeat the cycle, rebuilding the chest, and then going on. Video games are the exact opposite of Infinite Growth Forever. People get bored and move on. Meanwhile, Epic has many stable and valuable businesses - Unreal, the game store, etc. - which are perfectly capable of sustaining a sizable company. Just not one as sizable as Epic is. The best case for them is they figure that out, and manage to make a sustainable go of it doing that.
mvdtnz
It's a very straight forward letter without all of the usual fluff, which I appreciate. Bit it's concerning how much Epic still seems to be hanging their hat on Fortnite. Trends come and go and it seems unlikely to me that Fortnite will grow significantly in the future. It had its moment, they should be focusing on the next big thing.