UPDATE 4.54pm: Epic has confirmed reports of widespread layoffs at the company, saying the move will affect “around 830 employees”, with approximately two-thirds of those job cuts said to be in teams “outside of core development”.
Around 250 employees will leave the company as a result of Epic’s newly announced divestiture of Bandcamp and SuperAwesome.
“For a while now,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wrote in an all-staff email now shared on the company’s website, “we’ve been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.
“While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics.”