'We're Spending Significantly More than We're Making': Fortnite Publisher Epic Games Lays Off Over 1,000 Staff

Or - crazy suggestion - make games again instead of "game." Fortnite is past its prime; give me a new, visceral Unreal Tournament.

When they post record profits enriching the shareholders, I'm sure the laid off employees will see it all as worth it.

It's absolutely crazy how long this game has survived and more so being profitable...

@ElkinFencer10

YES!
Unreal Tournament is much needed, at least by me and some friend of mine.

So gross man. Nothing and no one is safe. Like a lot of folks keep saying - make a bad game - laid off. Make a worldwide best seller - laid off. 1 billion users? It should've been 2 billion - laid off.

I will say that, at least in Canada, Fortnite has yet to return to iOS, which I feel like is wild. Is it available on the US iOS?

It’s about making sure that the shareholders get more returns each year. If revenue is down then they have to cut outgoings by even more, god forbid shareholders make a bit less this year.

"It's also stressed in the statement that the layoffs have nothing to do with AI.

Here's the statement from CEO Tim Sweeney."

Yeah, sure Tim, whatever you say.

If You Want to Play a New Unreal Tournament on PS5, There's a Good Chance You're Old

This possibly puts the failures of the Concords and the Highguards of the world in a slightly different light. Previously the accepted logic was that these titles weren't needed, as online gamers were catered for with Fortnite and other big hitters.

If even Fortnite isn't safe, then that would imply that the appetite for these games in general could be waning. If so, the likes of Concord never stood a chance

It was a good run! One that lasted a lot longer than I expected. Not many games last this long (as we’ve seen a lot recently)

They might also be looking at GTA VI on the horizon and thinking "oh dear" (or words to that effect)

@get2sammyb One of your best (sub)titles in a long time imo. You know that Hookshot‘s typical readership is best described with „Sad Dad“.

@Max_the_German Guilty as charged. 😁

@INeedGoodGraphics By this point in the 3DS’ lifespan you could get a 2DS for like £70 with a game included. But then everything is expensive these days and has been for a few years now.

@Max_the_German
The average age for gamers is about 40 years old, so it's probably time for a new Unreal Tournament.

@ElkinFencer10 Epic have made it clear that UT is a dead franchise in their eyes and that’s why they are allowing fans to maintain the older games.

The only way we will see a new UT (unless we want a live service version which we don’t) is if someone licenses it.

@LowDefAl Nintendo made it clear that first party games wouldn't use game-key cards, yet Pokopia exists. What a company says one day and does the next are often incongruous. I'm sure everyone thought Bubsy was a dead franchise, too.

@HaveTheSauce it ain’t crazy at all; the game was a big original idea that pioneered an entire ongoing era of slop live service cringey s***

fortnite whether you like it or not is definitely in the hall of fame of gaming… unfortunately

@ElkinFencer10 Yeah your definitely right on that I loved unreal tournament on PC back in the day it was crazy good fun!

@ElkinFencer10 You mean, Bubsy isn’t dead?

@ElkinFencer10 All of Epics resources are in Fortnite or the engine so I don’t see any change here. They will look to reshine their golden goose before doing anything actually interesting.

It’s the same reason they sold Gears of War to Microsoft

I haven't played Fortnite in many, many years, but do feel for the 1000+ people about to lose their jobs. Maybe it's different in Europe, but for the US, those severance packages seem very generous, though.

Epic blaming "console sales" when UE5 is actively pushing people away from consoles games is laughable!

We are in the second video game crash. Just because it doesn't look like the first one does not mean that we are not in one. I believe the official total is around 45% total layoffs across the industry these past few years.

@ElkinFencer10 As someone that has over 100s of hours in Unreal Tournament 2004, from when I was a kid to even now, I'm really sad that UT is dead.
Epic had a great foundation for their revival by working with the community on a new entry, which is fitting with how much custom content is still being made for UT2k4. Just makes me sad it was tossed to the wayside once Fortnite became the juggernaut for them.

maybe this is proving that this type of game has or is coming to the end of it's cycle or maybe it is just the people that used to play Fortnite have actually grown up and have left that platform to play more age appropriate games. Fortnite to me always seemed to be aimed at the younger gamers

The game has between 30-60 million daily players, how is that struggling?

Cue the outrage for company cutting costs when sales drop. Zzzzz.

The people in the comments thinking this is the end of Fortnite don't really understand what's happening here. Fortnite is not struggling - they're spending more than they are making, but they are making a lot.

@wildcat_kickz 'Dying' cerainly isn't the right word. But, in their own words, there's a "downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025." A downturn significant enough to raise prices, layoff 1000 employees, and essentially kill several ongoing projects.

I doubt it's too late for things to turn around. But, sounds like we might be at the start of a grandiose decline.

@ElkinFencer10 The thing is that a new Unreal Tournament wouldn’t even make the same amount of money in it lifetime that Fortnite probably makes in a entire season… The big issue with Fortnite is it heavy reliance on licensed content and big name singer/actors.

@UltimateOtaku91 Cause in order to keep those 30-60 million daily players involves them spending so much on licensed content and big name actors/singers. No one is playing Fortnite for Fortnite. People are playing it cause you can have master chiefs fighting darth Vader fighting scooby doo… and that not cheap to have cause Microsoft/disney/wb want their license fees.

@RoomWithaMoose I just don't think we have the data to support that. They've probably passed peak engagement and will have to find a new normal, but saying that it's a "grandiose decline" is putting the cart way before the horse.

When you actually step back and think about the pure operating cost of Fortnite… You quickly realize that Epic is operating on tiny margins. Yeah they avoid engine cost and stuff. But that AWS cost gotta be pricey.

But let say you buy a marvel skin on console. Sony/Microsoft has to get their part of the micro transactions cost, then Disney has to get their part, then you probably have another middle man somewhere like the payment processing cost… etc.

The cost of paying singer and actor to be in game definitely ain’t cheap.

@INeedGoodGraphics You are right, but given that ps5 is doing similar numbers to ps4 despite costing twice the price at this point it’s not like it’s stopping people from buying them.

Nintendo are also picking up the slack from Microsoft.

Obviously they would sell more at a lower price but the market hasn’t really declined in the way some people would suggest. As long as you have a console someone wants of course.

Didn’t Epic say that user engagement had reached an all-time high during their Simpsons season?

@Stevemalkpus I suspect a lot of that user engagement didn't spend much if any money on microtransactions if the budget imbalance he claims is true.

@wildcat_kickz Sure. But I don't think it's sensible to act like it's business as usual over there. Collectively, these are insane cost-cutting initiatives that don't reflect sustainable growth.

There's nowhere to go after peak engagement besides down. And I can't emphasize enough how much firing 1000 people implies a sudden, sharp decline, and possibly a projected nadir.

They could keep those people, but heaven forbid it cuts the shareholders' profits.

Guess all those collaboration costs are catching up to them.

Epic you absolute losers man..

@Korgon all the legal costs over their battles with Apple and Google probably haven't helped and its generally accepted that Epic Game Store is either a loss leader or makes little money.

@RoomWithaMoose Oh, certainly. It's definitely not business as usual. Things are definitely not going according to plan, that's for sure.

I guess the point I was trying to make is that just because things are trending down now doesn't mean that it will ultimately spell doom for Fortnite. It may plateau at a new normal, which might be sustainable with all the cost-cutting they're doing. Who knows? Maybe things will grow again after stabilization, but I doubt they'd staff up again like they did before.

Wow. I was hoping the worst of the layoffs would be over last year. No such luck. There is a high rate of inflation and a lot of economic uncertainty so hobbies like gaming will be negatively impacted. I hope the laid off land on their feet.

@wildcat_kickz If I had to guess, Fortnite's attempt to get Roblox money just kinda blew up in their face.

That's where the growth was supposed to be. Lots of hours of development definitely went into expanding what Fortnite is and selling it as a platform rather than a game. Yet I doubt more than a fraction of a fraction of their playerbase ever bothered with anything not Battle Royale or BR-adjacent. This is likely what all these cuts are meant to curtail.

I agree in a sense, then. Fortnite the Battle Royale game is fine and will continue to be around for a long time coming. I just don't think we can downplay that this is perhaps the first major crack in its empire, and an indictment of its ostensibly infinite growth potential. I think it will settle into a state still fairly profitable. But I don't think they'll be seeing any significant growth from this point forward.

God they really are stinging the fans who supported this game at every angle.
first the Vbucks or whatever theyre called and now removing more game modes.
i could never get into fortnite so its not something i can support really.

@nessisonett ....but at the end of the day, thats why they exist. To make money for shareholders and the SE. They're not in business to make games, they're in business to make money. Like any other business

With GTA 6 around the corner and yes console sales way down across the board. It is to be expected a lot of big and small devs will be feeling some pinch. The Ram increase hurt this gen a lot in the backend. Right now is when players should be moving from PS4 to PS5 for a decent price. Not the case and many have instead said good to consoles and went to PC as that number of players and engagement is still growing. I sure hope GTA 6 don’t crush the market into a place where great games barely sell cause everyone is on GTA. But it’s likely. As for Fortnite i never liked it and the impact it had on the shooter genre but i hate to see so many out of work. I watched a video yesterday with a leak that Sony has their eyes on Haven, MM and FireSprite as potential closures if they don’t get content out. With leaks saying more cancelled games but no clue as to when this will be announced. Could not be true. Or it could be Sony shedding cost from Jim Ryans spending on live service before GTA and other games come out and these studios have a bombed game on their hands. The industry is in a rough place. Even when you sell a lot of hardware or have the biggest live service game in the world.

Y'know, if this was anyone else saying I would at least try to believe, but Epic literally has a constant revenue stream due to how Unreal Engine games works when it comes to licensing.
Not only that but they have arguably one of the most successful live service games of all times.

If you have to gut something why not the stupid store? No one is buying games on it anyways.

@RoomWithaMoose I think we're basically on the same page. The Roblox model doesn't work, anyway. I'm pretty sure they lose money hand over fist, too.

As I've said in other posts, I don't root for games to fail, but I also don't like how much market dominance a small handful of games have. If what Epic is doing now results in a smaller, but stable footprint for Fortnite, I think that benefits the industry at large.

@KingPev Wrong. They’re in business to make more money than last year. Which is where the issue lies. There is never a point that is ‘good enough’ so they push and push and then it all falls apart.

A lot of good points in the comments.

Considering how much of Tim's comments was about severance and vesting and all that stuff I'm guessing he's letting go of a lot of older (you know, the 30+ people) middle management folk and not just the younger new crunch time kids do the daily Fortnite stuff.

For all of you lucky enough to live in a modern country where universal health care is a thing, let me tell you here in the US people get jobs just to have health care. It's hard to retire or Switch jobs b/c you need job provided Healthcare. Especially now when the government is screwing over the ACA provided insurance that we have.

But young healthy people can stay on their parents insurance until 26, and a lot of younger people don't bother. So Tim spending so much time on this makes me wonder if it's really just the young people he's getting rid of or a lot of the long term older crowd making more money.

My point being, is it all just Fortnite or is something else going on at Epic? Like their store or game engine leases? Or did Tim Sweeney buy a lot of expensive NFTs a few years ago that are now worthless? Sorry to go all conspiracy theory but Tim's a white guy, probably has white guy problems, like gambling addiction or something.

In 5 years when there is a made for TV movie about the collapse of Epic Games we can all remember this article. 😎

@nessisonett ...exactly. Its business. Asking a company "how much is enough ?"....well, there's never enough. All profit targets are based on exceeding the previous years profits - if they don't, shares tumble, meaning unhappy shareholders and an unhappy Stock Exchange. Capitalism at its finest

Think they spent too much on giving us free games.

Spending on houses, yachts, shares…

My sympathy for 1000 people who got layoff. I hope they get a new job asap 🙏

@Gremio108 One can only hope this is true, and perhaps, games will return to the 'glory days' of being cheaper, with shorter development times, while being fewer yet more unique amongst them.

How does that happen though? Why scale the projects that much? Too many modes, too many skins, too many seasons, just better scale the project.

Oh well, expected, it happens, they have to make more happen, tackle every possible audience for sure. Has to be bigger and hard to manage for sure.

Whatever the case for other factors inside the business/related to staff and other factors, and not just development costs/execution and maintaining things.

If not even Fortnite can be profitable in the current market conditions, it seems like some combination of these things is true:

A. Modern AAA game development is too expensive and broken.
B. The live service model is dying.
C. Management at Epic has been incompetent and ridiculously wasteful with their spending funds from the ultimate gaming cash cow. Like a trust fund kid inheriting a fortune and blowing it all before turning 30.