Following news about Sega's project Hyenas being axed and potentially leading to job losses, the Fortnite creator Epic Games has announced it's laying off 870 employees at its own company.
These job cuts are believed to impact about 16% of Epic's workforce, according to sources who wish to remain anonymous. And apparently, two-thirds of the job cuts were in teams outside of core development.
Epic's Chief Executive Officer Tim Sweeney told employees in a memo the video game giant had been "spending way more money" than it actually earns for some time now.
“I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see this was unrealistic.”
Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier mentions how Mediatonic, the team behind the free-to-play platform battle royale Fall Guys, have been hit "very hard" by these mass layoffs, but the studio is still operating.
Employees impacted by these job cuts get "six months of severance and health insurance, as well as accelerated stock vesting". Epic supposedly doesn't have any other layoffs planned and is still hiring in other roles.
If we hear any updates, we'll let you know.
[source bloomberg.com]
Comments 16
Epic spends millions yearly on nonsensical character skins from IPs they don't own, and on top of that they are offering 100% revenue to those developers who go exclusively with them as a tactic to hurt Steam.
In other words, Epic is like META, wasting money left and right forgetting their main priorities.
I feel bad for all those that lost their jobs. I hope they can find a new job relatively soon. It’s tough times out there.
The team that managed Fall Guys made some weird decisions. They vaulted maps/levels and expected players to keep playing the smaller rotation of levels/maps for a too long of a season.
Are layoff articles the new "studio has crunch" articles?
@MasterPlayerOne didnt meta stock go all the way almost back up?
If true the maybe meta would not be a good example as they are doing very very well after switching
@rizangle META (aka Facebook) had to fire over 10.000 people in order to understand certain priorities, but thousands of people had to pay the consequences for it... besides the fact that META can still afford to burn far more money than Epic regardless if their stocks go up or down.
Layoffs always suck, but got to admit that is a fantastic severance package. 6 months + accelerated stock options vesting? That’s plenty of time to find a new job, and anyone finding something before the 6 months end up with quite a nice bundle of cash leftover.
@MasterPlayerOne you are conveniently forgetting Microsoft has also had to layoff over 10,000 employees this year. All why trying to spent billions on publishers. I guess it’s different for them though yeh?
What on Earth is happening with the gaming industry?!! They've never raked in more money, yet I can't remember the last time so many people got fired. Devs need to unionize and if need be, start a new protest. This is truly getting out of hand. These corporations need to treat their workers better! Disgusting!
@GeeEssEff : It's quite different, Google, Amazon, Microsoft are 3 biggest of the biggest companies in the world that had to over staffed through the pandemic in order to keep their businesses going remotely and when things normalized it was time to let those people go, while Epic is going through money troubles by over spending left and right in one single IP....
So yes, it's a big difference....next time try to compare apple to apples.
Shame to see people lose their jobs, but glad to see there's a severance package to ease the change.
Epic has grown massively the past 5 years or so, and now the economy is on the downslide so many companies that were "investing" (AKA throwing money around) are now realising they're out on a limb. Fortnite is still a MASSIVE money maker, but not like it used to be, and they're focussed so much on "collaborations" rather than building their own characters and IPs.
@MasterPlayerOne I was more referring to you randomly bringing Meta into the mix (which is also one of the biggest companies in the world) but either way I don’t see how you can accuse other companies of over spending when MS is dropping 69 billion on ABK but it does seem like the standard cultish hypocrisy I would expect so dunno why I’m surprised tbh. Also you couldn’t be more incorrect in your suggestion that the 10,000 employees MS let go were employees bought on during the pandemic, there are absolutely tons of cases posts online from people who had been working for Microsoft for over a decade. Let’s not pretend either of us know the ins and outs of any of these companies and why they make redundancies. You don’t know the inner workings of epic, MS, meta or Amazon and neither do I. The difference is I know it’s highly unlikely to be as simple as “they over spent on stupid stuff” and if it is you really should be applying that same logic to MS. But nothing I say will change your blind fanboyism so let’s just move on. Good day to you and keep fighting the good fight for a monopolistic giant who doesn’t know you exist 👍
@MasterPlayerOne so are doing great and can rehire if needed
@GeeEssEff META thousands of layoffs were caused by two separate issues, COVID hires no longer needed and the massive amount of money burned on Horizon Worlds which cause a huge a exodus in their department... similar to what's going on with Epic and their layoffs.....so comparing that to Microsoft was totally off.
@MasterPlayerOne Perfectly reasonable comparing them. Both are insanely large monopolies who have made decisions over the last 5-10 years which eventually resulted in them needing to ruin 10,000 people’s lives. The only difference from your perspective is you think one company can do no wrong and the other can…..because you’re a fanboy. Get a grip.
@GeeEssEff Well it's your opinion, which I guess you are entitled to it.
With that said, Epic needs to steer that ship around as they don't have the million to keep burning.
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