Fortnite dev Epic Games to offer hundreds of contract-based testers full-time employment

eurogamer.net:

Epic Games, the developer behind Fortnite, is offering hundreds of its temporary contract-based workers full time employment.

Speaking to The Verge, Epic spokesperson Elka Looks said the company would offer «a few hundred» of its contractors full-time employment and revealed «most but not all» of these workers are QA testers.

In addition to this, Looks also confirmed those who become full-time employees of Epic will be «eligible for the company's US employee benefits plans».

However, this is not to say Epic will be doing all of its testing in house from now on. Rather, the company will «still hire contingent workers for 'short-term needs'».

This news from Epic follows the Activation Blizzard QA walkouts in December.

These walkouts were a protest by the many employees from Raven Software (known for its work on Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and CoD: Warzone) being unceremoniously laid off, despite being told they «did nothing wrong».

Epic has been making moves to improve its employee welfare over the years.

The company makes a point of shutting for two weeks each summer and two weeks each Christmas to give all staff a holiday. There's usually a big Fortnite patch a couple of days before this happens which preps the game to tick over while the staff are on break.

But even with these office closures, Epic has not been free from scrutiny by its employees.

Towards the end of last year, the company ended its alternating four-day-work week policy that was introduced at the height of the Covid pandemic, upsetting some.

However, Epic said its alternating four-day-week schedule was never intended to be permanent.

«Right now, we are seeing lots of Fridays off for deep work, and lots of people who must work Fridays anyways,»