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Epic Games To Cut More Than 1,000 Jobs As Fortnite Usage Falls (reuters.com) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the sign-of-the-times dept.
Epic Games is cutting more than 1,000 jobs as usage of its flagship title, Fortnite, falls. "The layoffs aren't related to AI," CEO Tim Sweeney noted. Reuters reports: The cuts, along with more than $500 million in savings from lower contracting and marketing spending and unfilled roles would put the company in "a more stable place," Sweeney said in a note to employees. [...]

"We've had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic," Sweeney said, adding "market conditions today are the most extreme" since the early days of the company founded in 1991.

The move marks Epic's second major round of layoffs in three years. In September 2023, the company cut about 830 jobs, or roughly 16% of its workforce. It was not immediately clear what percentage of staff would be impacted by Tuesday's announcement.
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Epic Games To Cut More Than 1,000 Jobs As Fortnite Usage Falls More

Epic Games To Cut More Than 1,000 Jobs As Fortnite Usage Falls

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  • Here's an idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Reckoning ( 10502566 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @01:09PM (#66059152)
    You're a game studio. Make a new game. I know what you're saying, it's too early! Fortunately JUST came out in 2017. That was like yesterday!
    • Fortnight***
      • Fortnite. Damn you mobile autocorrect.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Fortnight is 2 weeks in your freedom units.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

      You're a game studio. Make a new game. I know what you're saying, it's too early! Fortunately JUST came out in 2017. That was like yesterday!

      This is exactly what Tim Sweeny was hoping would happen when he decided to bet heavily on 'content creators' and creator codes. Sadly, it hasn't happened, what we got was variations on a theme, rocket league, cheat development and BrainRot. There's a fundamental problem in that there's really nothing new under the sun. If there was a new thing, people would have found it by now. The real problem is that these transnational corprations are incapable of producing fair and entertaining games at all. What they

  • Tim Sweeny is reportedly a big advocate for the value of generative AI in developing games. I think it'd be fair to say he's one of those AI inevitablists.

    But money is fungible. If you earn or save a bunch of money through behavior A, then you might not be required to make a sacrifice in order to save or earn that money though behavior B.

    So if Sweeny says that the layoffs aren't AI-related, he's either lying or he's admitting that AI isn't helping the company's bottom line after all.

  • It's time for a new Unreal Tournament. You know, one with actual teeth.
    • The last one didn't do very well for them.

      • You mean Unreal Tournament 3? That was 19 years ago, and it sold well and got good reviews.

        • I remember playing Unreal Tournament 2004 a ton. I loved all the different difficulty levels to keep it challenging or if you just wanted to be a badass you could set it lower. Lots of different levels, including a really awesome single player mode that took you through different map settings (CTF, Domination, timed match with goals).

          I even still have the box it came in and the CDs for install and playing, though I'm not sure if I still have the hack to play without the CD now. I remember buying it specific

        • You mean Unreal Tournament 3? That was 19 years ago, and it sold well and got good reviews.

          No, Unreal Tournament (2014) [wikipedia.org].

          It's pretty depressing what happened, actually, because on paper, it was awesome. The base game was free, and it even had a new game mode called Blitz. The amount of maps it shipped with was pretty meager, but the goal was to have modders sell their maps/mods/skins/etc as IAPs within the game and then they got a cut. The game still allowed for private/dedicated servers, and while it lacked some of the polish of UT3, the framework was there and it really worked well as a de facto

          • Yeah I played the preview of that as well, it was great. I think it would've done well if they'd released it. It just needed some maps.

    • Unreal doesn't give us tournaments anymore, only engines.

  • Anyway⦠Tim Sweeney has ensured his golden parachute so all is good.

  • Jazz Time (Score:4, Informative)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @02:23PM (#66059340)

    Fortnite is their flagship title? More like their only title.

    Time to bring back Jazz Jackrabbit!

    • I hate you. I had such fond memories of Jazz Jackrabbit right until you pointed out that it was developed by these shitbags. To be fair they weren't shitbags at the time though.

      But yeah they have more than one title. They bought Rocket Racing (and then proceeded to abandon Linux despite it being one of the few Linux platform titles.

      But man nostalgia. We recently downloaded Unreal Tournament 2004 at a LAN party and had a hell of a fun time. Also I have fond memories of the early Gears of War titles.

    • Bring her back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Damnit! I was going to say that!

      Though I was going to include ZZT. Get back to your roots Epic formerly-Megagames!

  • How many billions did that game make them? Seriously, this just be one of the highest grossing videogames ever, no? How long has it been going? 9 years? That's pretty epic if you ask me. This game was nothing other than an epic success (no pun intended).

  • I find it hard to believe that there were over 1,000 people working on Fortnite to fire. The game has been around for almost a decade, the visuals have the detail of a Dreamcast game, and the sound is nothing to write home about. It does not take 1,000 people to poop out the mediocre advertising that makes up much of the new content in Fortnite. Something else is wrong at Epic and I think that it probably has something to do with the continuing unpopularity of the Epic Games Store.

  • I remember when Epic hit it big with Fortnite. I remember Epic going to war with Steam and how they went about that. It's been years. Hope it sinks.

  • Having played Fortnite since shortly after it came out, mostly as a way to keep in touch with my nephews and nieces, the game has been in decline for quite a while. They made a number of cutbacks over the years and added a bunch of new subscriptions, and than raised the cost of everything. Just as an example, Fortnite used to end every chapter with an event. Millions of people would log on, and watch what was essentially the epilogue of that season and the trailer for the next. They gradually cut back and m

  • Not especially surprising (Score:3)

    by Stolovaya ( 1019922 ) <skingiii@nOSpam.gmail.com> on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @05:15PM (#66059716)

    Epic's been coasting on Fortnite and Unreal Engine money.

    The Epic Game Store is a joke and loses them money, between giving away games, courting publishers over players, and not even trying to compete with other storefronts (Steam is feature rich, GOG is DRM-free). Paying for exclusives, even though usually timed, also costs money and doesn't really sit well with a lot of gamers.

    It also costs money to fight companies like Google and Valve, to make it to where in-game transactions aren't charged the same cut that Google and Valve's storefronts have.

    It sounds like the quality of Fortnite has dwindled, and the costs for skins has gone up.

    It doesn't help that it's run by Tim Sweeney. He's a bit of an asshole and isn't really anyone that should be speaking for the company.

    • It sounds like the quality of Fortnite has dwindled, and the costs for skins has gone up.

      It doesn't help that it's run by Tim Sweeney. He's a bit of an asshole and isn't really anyone that should be speaking for the company.

      Fortnite is a great game. I've had a lot of fun playing it with my kids. Given that you can play it and have fun for free....not sure why you'd complain about skins. That funds the development and building new maps. The maps are typically well thought out. The game performs really well across a lot of hardware. It's not my favorite game, but it's very good at what it does. It's a fun, family-friendly battle royale shooter that's free to fully play and caters to a younger audience.

      If you're pissed

  • Instead of picking fights with their distribution platforms, maybe they should have directed more attention towards creating new games. I can only imagine how much money they have missed out on in a foolish effort to try and become the new Steam for mobile platforms. I wonder how many people will even install the Epic store on their iPhone/Android device - I know I won't.

  • SO all the KIDS that played Fortnite have found girlfriends and have something else to play with.
  • Instead of bitching at Apple, fighting them in court on how they should run their appstore, Sweeney should have been focused on developing awesome games, excellent interfaces. They spent a shit load of time and money sticking their nose in Apple's business, got their games delisted from iOS platforms only to obtain something that's now worthless to them.

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