The Fornite and Unreal Engine company lays off about 900 employees.

Epic Games lays off about 900 employees

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Unexpectedly, Epic Games will lay off 16% of its workforce. This is revealed by Jason Schreier, who explained that the company responsible for Unreal Engine and Fortnite “is going to lay off about 900 employees”, something that has already been announced to the staff by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.

“Since a time ago, We have been spending a lot more money than we earn.investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as an ecosystem for creators inspired by the metaverse”, can be read by Sweeney, who “had long been optimistic that we could drive this transition without layoffs, but In retrospect I see that this was not realistic.“.

If a price increase in Fornite was announced a few hours ago, Epic Games reveals that free-to-play is once again increasing its player base. “Growth is primarily driven by creator content with a significant revenue share, and this It’s a lower margin business than what we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began to finance our expansion.

That said, and although Epic has attempted to reduce costs, the company would be far from achieving financial sustainability, which is why it has been concluded that “layoffs are the only wayand that doing them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances.

Mass layoffs in the video game industry

Layoffs have become widespread in the video game industry after the pandemic. Earlier this year, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees, including some from Xbox and Bethesda. Another large staff reduction was carried out by CD Projekt Red, around 10%, something that has also happened to a lesser or greater extent at Unity, Riot Games, Blizzard, Crystal Dynamics or Bioware.

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