Fortnite and Unreal creator Epic Games lays off around 870 staff

pcgamesn.com:

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, Unreal Engine 5, and Gears of War, is laying off around 870 staff members, which represent 16% of the total workforce. The reports follow after multiplayer shooter Hyenas has been canceled by Sega, with Total War and Alien Isolation developer Creative Assembly also announcing job losses and redundancies.

One of the biggest battle royale games in the world, Fortnite is the flagship shooter from Epic, which also develops and licenses Unreal Engine 5, operates the Epic Games Store, and develops the Gears of War series. Around 40% of Epic Games’ stock is owned by Chinese parent company Tencent, while the majority of the company belongs to founder and CEO Tim Sweeney.

The latest Fortnite update, Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 4, began on Friday, August 25, as the multiplayer game enters its eighth year after launching in 2017. Despite Fortnite’s enormous success and the growing popularity and use of Unreal Engine 5 among other game developers, Epic Games will lay off 16% of its employees.

“As we shared earlier, we are laying off around 16% of Epic employees,” CEO Tim Sweeney says. “For a while now, we’ve been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.

“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. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great