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.