Fortnite Developer Epic Games Lays Off 1,000 Employees, Blaming 'Downturn in Engagement'

Fortnite developer Epic Games has announced it is laying disconnected 1,000 staff, owed to a "downturn successful engagement" successful its evergreen conflict royale.

In a connection to unit shared publically this morning, Epic Games brag Tim Sweeney said the institution was "spending importantly much than we're making", meaning that it present needed to marque "major cuts to support the institution funded."

The quality comes conscionable a week aft the motorboat of Fortnite's highly-anticipated caller conflict royale season, and 2 weeks aft the institution controversially raised the terms of the game's lucrative V-Bucks in-game currency, prompting a immense backlash from players.

"Today we’re laying disconnected implicit 1,000 Epic employees," Sweeney told Epic Games employees. "I'm atrocious we're present again. The downturn successful Fortnite engagement that started successful 2025 means we're spending importantly much than we're making, and we person to marque large cuts to support the institution funded." Today's layoffs are being accompanied by "over $500 cardinal of identified outgo savings" successful contracting and marketing, helium continued, portion the hiring of immoderate roles volition cease.

"Some of the challenges we're facing are industry-wide challenges," Sweeney wrote, blaming "slower growth, weaker spending, and tougher outgo economics." Discussing that past constituent successful much detail, Sweeney said that existent consoles were selling little than past generation, and noted that games were progressively competing for clip against different forms of entertainment.

"And immoderate of our challenges are unsocial to Epic," helium continued. "Despite Fortnite remaining 1 of the astir palmy games successful the world, we've had challenges delivering accordant Fortnite magic with each season; we're lone successful the aboriginal stages of returning to mobile and optimizing Fortnite for the world's billions of smartphones; and successful being the industry's vanguard we person taken a batch of bullets successful a conflict which is lone successful the aboriginal days of paying disconnected for ourselves and each developers."

"We person taken a batch of bullets successful a conflict which is lone successful the aboriginal days of paying off..."“

Originally launched backmost successful 2017 arsenic a elemental PVE zombie shooter, Fortnite blew up successful popularity erstwhile its developers rapidly launched a conflict royale component, pursuing the occurrence of PUBG. The years that followed saw Fortnite capitalize connected its occurrence and go a popular civilization phenomenon, location to record-breaking unrecorded events and concerts, and crossovers with the world's biggest amusement franchises.

Today, Fortnite is simply a level wherever its conflict royale is conscionable 1 gameplay mode among many, but its occurrence has paled compared to the tremendous playerbase of Roblox, portion Epic's ain efforts to turn Fortnite beyond its shooter origins person had mixed fortunes. The company's December 2023 Big Bang relaunch which introduced LEGO, racing and euphony modes did not turn the game's playerbase arsenic hoped, and consequent launches (including an upcoming competitory Arena option) person stuck person to Fortnite's shooter origins.

In a abstracted announcement today, Epic Games said its Pysonix-made Rocket Racing mode would spell offline permanently aboriginal this twelvemonth aft antecedently being mothballed. Two different modes volition beryllium culled adjacent month, meanwhile: Festival Battle Stage, a much competitory instrumentality connected its main Harmonix-made euphony offering, and Fortnite Ballistic, an effort astatine making a tactical shooter.

Today's layoffs see precocious illustration and long-standing Fortnite squad members, including main technologist Evan Kinney, who posted his absorption connected societal media and said helium was "confused and bewildered" astatine being "thrown out" aft years moving connected the crippled and its fashionable unrecorded events.

"What we present request to bash is clear," Sweeney continued successful his connection to staff, telling them they needed to "build awesome Fortnite experiences with caller seasonal content, gameplay, story, and unrecorded events; accelerate developer tools with greater stableness and capableness arsenic we germinate from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6. And we'll beryllium kicking disconnected the adjacent procreation of Epic with immense motorboat plans towards the extremity of the year.

"This isn't our archetypal clip being here, helium continued. "Epic survived upheavals successful 1990's with the determination from 2D to 3D with Unreal 1; successful the 2000's gathering console games with Gears of War; and successful 2012 moving to online gaming with Paragon and Fortnite. Each time, we rebuilt our foundations and earned a renewed enactment position.

"Market conditions contiguous are the astir utmost we've seen since those aboriginal days, with monolithic upheaval successful the manufacture accompanied by monolithic accidental for the companies that travel retired arsenic winners connected the different side. That's what we're aiming to bash for our players, and we purpose to bring different like-minded developers successful the manufacture on connected the travel to physique an progressively unfastened and vibrant aboriginal of amusement together."

On the taxable of AI, Sweeney noted specifically that its emergence successful prominence wrong crippled improvement was not a origin here. "The layoffs aren't related to AI," helium noted. "To the grade it improves productivity, we privation to person arsenic galore awesome developers processing large contented and tech arsenic we can."

Concluding his message, Sweeney described the layoffs arsenic "very painful", and noted that impacted unit would person astatine slightest 4 months of basal wage and healthcare coverage, arsenic good accelerated banal options. Epic Games past held a large circular of layoffs successful 2023, erstwhile it made 830 unit redundant — astir 16% of its workforce astatine the time. Following that, the institution was believed to employment a small implicit 4,000 radical — suggesting that today's wide layoffs person impacted astir a 4th of the company.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You tin scope Tom astatine [email protected] oregon find him connected Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social