Epic laying off 800 staff
pcgamesinsider.bizFortnite and Unreal Engine giant Epic Games is cutting over 800 jobs.
The news was announced in an email from CEO Tim Sweeney (pictured), in which the exec said that the company was making 830 members of staff redundant. That's around 16 per cent of Epic's employees.
The company is also selling Bandcamp, which it bought in March 2022, to music licensing platform Songtradr. That's on top of marketing firm SuperAwesome being spun out into its own business. Epic bought that company in 2020.
Fall Guys maker Mediatonic – acquired in 2021 – is also facing job cuts, according to staff posting on social media. Speaking to Inside Gaming, Epic said that reports that the studio had been entirely closed were false.
"While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion," Sweeney wrote.
"Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics.
"Epic folks around the world have been making ongoing efforts to reduce costs, including moving to net zero hiring and cutting operating spend on things like marketing and events. But we still ended up far short of financial sustainability. We concluded that layoffs are the only way, and that doing them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances."
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