Epic Games Is Reportedly Laying Off Nearly 900 Employees

I hope everyone lands on their feet.

That 540M% could have kept these people on. Shady business dealings hurt the little guys again.

@Stamina_Wheel The gaming industry is completely hit driven, not unlike movies. This is why they like contractors instead of employees. Project is done, contractors roll off. Too many misses or fluctuations and you have to lay off employees to offset. It's one of the reasons I left the gaming industry and don't care to go back.

This has nothing to do with "inflation." This has nothing to do with "economic factors."
This is corporate greed, pure and simple.

Gamers are spending less, because big business CEOs are getting increasingly money hungry and gouging every penny from the grocery store to the gas and petrol pumps.
All the other executive suits at Epic Games know this, and they can't stand the idea of not being able to buy their 5th yacht this year. So, price increases for all, job cuts for many, all in the name of maximizing payouts to the CEO class.

It's ruthless, it's needless, and it's inexcusable.
And these CEOs are going to very soon learn you can't milk a dry cow for long. You can't wring money out from people who have more important things to spend it on than V-bucks.

Tl;Dr - This is not a sustainable business model, and the video game industry is moving towards another 1983 crash.

Just stop supporting Epic Games.
No more fortnite, no more stupid popular stuffs, no more kids misusing the credits card for micro transactions, no more tyranny in gaming business.

@LadyCharlie I don't disagree - but I also wonder how much in lost revenue Sweeney's legal fight with Apple cost them over the last few years, since Fortnite has never returned to the iOS App Store since it began.

Before more people spout off about what is happening. I was in senior Leadership for more than a decade Epic before I left this last January. This has nothing to do with corporate greed or shady business deals. Epic was very charitable to all of it's employees. Their benefits were bar none the best.

What really happened... they grew too fast and brought on lots of people. They started a lot of initiatives that pulled them too thin. Tim Sweeney's email to the company explains a lot. They are providing generous severence packages to all people leaving. I love Epic and they always treated me and my teams great. It is devastating to see realized, but a lot of us internally were feeling this coming a long time ago.

The games industry is in a really brutal time right now from big to little company's. Any speculation like the one above couldn't be further from the truth about Sweeney. You have no clue about what goes on inside. You just have conjured narratives.

I’m getting a little tired of company’s using inflation as an excuse for there greed. Funny enough I think Fortnite also lowered its prices about three years ago, so there literally just reverting that change to this original price Lmao.

Edit: I also wish nothing but the best for all the employees that got laid off.

Two things:

1. It's really shameful that despite the gaming industry being the most profitable form of media worldwide, programmers have about as much job security as my dad who has worked in the coal mines his whole life and been unemployed on multiple occasions as mining facilities continually get shut down. Unfortunately for my community, coal is a dying industry. Gaming is not, so there's absolutely no excuse for this to be happening.

2. Remember when Epic wanted us to all rally behind them as the little guys in the fight against the big, bad Apple Corporation because they didn't want to pay the fees associated with the app store? Yeah. Never again.

Hopefully this will prove just as detrimental to Epic as the Unity kerfuffle. This deserves to make them lose consumer trust.

@DaftSkunk Costs of doing business. If Epic is looking to make cuts, it should start by slashing a 0 off CEOs yearly payouts, before doing harm to the boots-on-the-ground workers.

@NintendoJunkie If they were so great, why'd you leave?

I bet that many of these are foreign workers under the H1B visa program, which is very common in that industry. Which makes it easy to get rid of that contract staff with little pushback. Which is wrong.

@DaftSkunk

His tactics and attitude are why i will never use Epics Store.
Just disgusting and you can see that the tactic is not going well.

He gives away games to bind people on the Store and pays Devs/Publishers for exclusive releases, but those are mostly games that have some potential to fail.

And i wish they would change the way their engine is compiling shaders (on the fly), as it just leads to stuttering games.

Sad to hear people are losing their livelihoods, but given their resumes, I'm sure they will land somewhere - there's always a need for talent.

Selfishly, I'm rather more bothered about Bandcamp which I love and the company recently bought. Do. Not. Mess. With. Bandcamp.

@Not_Soos @Not_Soos That is a great question. I left because:
1. My kids were getting older and I wanted to spend more time with them.
2. I lost my mom to cancer and went through a pretty dark time, Epic was very supportive in that time, but I reviewed a lot of what I valued in life then.
3. I wanted to do something besides Fortnite, and their vision of the metaverse. As an artist I wanted to explore new places.

@NintendoJunkie Thank you for your candid response. Very sorry to hear about your mom. Much love. ❤️

@LadyCharlie I just want to clarify something. I understand that a lot of companies do what you are talking about. But that is not Epic. They got rid of past board members, because those board members wanted to take larger portions of bonus pools (50% and divvy them amongst the board). I will not name names but they were jerks.

Tim Sweeney on several occasions went to the mat with the board saying that all profits needed to be split evenly between the devs. He was only talked down because the rest of the board said that they needed to keep money in the bank for a rainy day. Tim consistently gave as much bonus money and stock options that he could without compromising the security of the company (and by extension everyone's jobs).

In the games industry there are a lot of jerks, misogynists, shady people, greedy shysters and everyone else you sense there are. That was not my experience at Epic. To my surprise any time a bad actor would show up in management, they had only a little amount of time before they were escorted out of the company.

Tim is a lot of things, like all humans, he is multifaceted and complicated. But he is not Mr. Burns, or any caricature of devious tycoons.

Nintendo are the best, they hired a few people for life, rather than a lot of people and fired them a couple of years later.

@NintendoJunkie I'm glad you, personally, got fair treatment at the time of your employ.

There is also nothing anyone can ever say to me that will ever make me empathize with any members of the CEO class, under any circumstance. My hardline stance is exactly that.

Virtual outfits just got a bit more expensive. Sad that we will never see a virtual charity shop where you can buy other people's cast offs for a discount and help benefit good causes.
I feel sorry for the bigwigs at Epic. Living off ramen for the last few months due to them not making any money. Back to the caviar now though.

@NintendoJunkie you're not doing reactionary vitriol right!

(Thanks for your insights though. These things are always more complex than they may appear!)

Epic has been trying tooth and nail to take Steam’s smoke and while they do have the backing of major third parties, clearly the cost was too severe.

From the Bloomberg article, "Employees who were affected by the job cuts will receive six months of severance and health insurance, as well as accelerated stock vesting."

If a company that is just making video games lays off 870 people and that is only 16% of the company then that company probably had too many employees. According to wiki Epic had only 200 employees total when Tencent bought 40% in 2012 about 10 years ago. So they went from 200 to about 5,000 in 10 years just making video games? Seems too big too fast to me. I wonder how many of the people being laid off were making the storefront and now that it’s up and running they no longer need them?

Anyway greed, capitalism yadda yadda the class war is over and we lost.😞

How does Tim Sweeny say they don't make enough money to support all of their employees when they literally have not only one of if not the biggest game of the past decade, but also easily the biggest 3rd party game engine for most developers

Wow. 900 staff is 16% of their workforce? I didn't realize how huge Epic was.

@Fighting_Game_Loser By spending more than that stuff makes.

@LadyCharlie But, if employees are idle, why keep 900 unnecessary people hired, charity? Even governments that employ too many public servants overwhelm the public sector.

Solution for you: open your own company.

This was the solution for me. I complained just like you. So I opened my company, understood the other side of the coin, won, and now I'm close to retiring at 42, because if I stop working, I'll still have income for the rest of my life. I'm passing the company on to the best of the employees, and I'm sure he will fire at least 10 people....

@Fighting_Game_Loser
He’s a hypocrite with a martyr complex, he only cares about being smacked around in court and infecting the entire industry with his janky engine that’s now a million times jankier with UE5 and it’s quest to overthrow solid image quality and performance on current gen consoles.

@Anti-Matter your hearts in the right place but like others have said epic is bigger then just fortnite, they also have the unreal engine which is an engine that 90% (just a shot in the dark) of developers use. I hope those affected land on their feet.

@EaglyBird

Admittedly, I don't like epic games, but I agree with you 100%.

There had to be a better way than sacking their people in response to bad business decisions.

@NintendoJunkie I can understand your feelings there. Being at the same point on my professional carrer after 19 years making games.

Always wanted to do games, not sure anymore at this point since I got two children I want to take time with.

Edit: Even that it's sad, Epic grew and aimed too much and this is the consecuence. Hope they'll focus again on what they're great, more on games and game tech.

Best wishes for all the affected families.

Sorry for folks who lost their jobs. I’ve gotta think Epic spending hundreds of millions to get timed PC exclusives was one waste that didn’t do them any favors.

@LadyCharlie is that just for business matters, or literally no empathy in any situation for c-suite execs?

So they have over 5,000 employees? That seems quite large.

hm...Should've tried more microtransactions.

@tanasten yeah it bums me out. I just found out a couple of friends got hit from it.

For context we were at about 700 employees when Fortnite launched and about 5 to six years later they grew to over 5000. It just couldn't sustain itself under the weight. It was a tough situation because all the departments were always wanting more help, while they took on more initiatives. Trying to make hay while the sun shined.

From Tim's email to the company, it sounds like they found some equilibrium. I hope so. It's really rough out there now.

Harmonix died for this…

@NintendoJunkie But what specifically were these excessive initiatives you're talking about, and what motivated them? Whose ambitions were the ones that stretched the company beyond its capacity? The employees getting laid off?

Not necessarily trying to argue against what you're saying, but you have not provided any information that contradicts the notion that this was the greed (or, to be more charitable, creative ambitions) of the upper echelons of the company damaging the lives of those actually doing the labor.

Tim Sweeney is a billionaire.

@demacho No Argument taken. I can't divulge all of the initiatives since some of them are still en route. But an example would be the musical events, where the leads and the team both collectively wanted to do something amazing but burned themselves out and needed help the next time. I say this to clarify that a lot of internal Epic employees are highly motivated and driven to deliver the next big thing. Topping every experience wasn't something coming from above as much a within the teams pushing themselves and then realizing they couldn't do it without more help.

Additionally, there were several projects that they tried to spin up internally but didn't work out. Epic hired to make good on the vision and in the process got overstaffed when the projects fell through. This is no different than a lot of companies that staff up to make a product or game and the game ends up failing, resulting in studio closures. In this case, they had several of these that occured internally without announcement. Until this round of layoffs, Epic generally shifted people to other internal projects (mostly Fortnite) when the side initiatives fell through.

One final part would be Fortnite as a whole became so much bigger than the team could have the manpower to maintain. The content production couldn't keep up with demand. There were a lot of contract workers, but over time conversions would happen. A lot of times the bulk hires came in the form of support for teams like: QA, CS, more producers hired to manage the organization.

I should also clarify that I don't take greed enitrely off the table, I just don't think it was a factor in the layoffs necessarily. But it isn't a blanket application. There were a lot of employees that came on after Fortnite's success that wanted a bite of that pile of gold. Conversely there were a lot of people that wanted to be part of something big and different. I do take caution at leveling the criticism at Tim, specifically. Greed and Tim aren't really adjacent. He is far more concerned with technology and making technology that is accessible to the masses. It is difficult to explain but, he is not cut and dry. A lot of folks saw his attack on Apple as greed vs greed. It was more like Don Quixote. While at Epic, I couldn't talk about it, so it is weird to be able to now. Tim wasn't a teddy bear, but he tried to do right by his company, that are very much his family, and right by the future. I could go into more details but I hope this adds more nuance...???

@NintendoJunkie it does at plenty of nuance to chew on. thank you for the thoughtful response. still mulling all this over.

What is the quote? “If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.” Something like that anyways

@LadyCharlie "There is also nothing anyone can ever say to me that will ever make me empathize with any members of the CEO class, under any circumstance. My hardline stance is exactly that."

Always read your comments with interest and this statement I agree with whole heartedly. People need to understand the word 'fair' because while top CEO's live a live of Riley and allow workers to 'get by' I will always stand with you on this. I often wonder how many people agree with this sentiment or are just wannabe CEO's because greed is not just a rich persons thing in my opinion.

It's one thing if a company is spending more money than it's earning, as seems to be the case here. It is unfortunate that this is happening, and I honestly hope that those people will find new work quickly.

Compare that to Activision Blizzard, which laid off almost 800 employees in 2019, despite posting record revenue for the previous fiscal year (and their then-new Chief Financial Officer getting a $15 million sign-on bonus, most of it in stocks).

In these cases, one company is losing money, the other was making it. Whereas I sympathize with Epic Games' plight, Activision Blizzard's similar move came across as pure greed to many people, including myself.

Sorry. I hate that for the families affected by this, but I have zero sympathy for Epic Games. While their CEO may wholeheartedly believe he is for the people, the reality is they wanted to change one corporate gatekeeper for another. Epic’s dream was to become like Apple and Steam, not liberate us from it. Like all companies we would have watched the benefits move from us the consumers, to third parties and then finally to themselves as they locked each group in. Mr. Sweeney would have eventually taken his golden parachute and left the rest of us screwed.

@dew12333 "greed is not just a rich persons thing in my opinion."
This is also a true statement, you are right.
But I do still wonder what a member of the working class feels they have to gain, from rooting for Tim Sweeney and the like to have bank accounts in obscene numbers.

I do find it strange someone talks they have a company they started but gives no name to it? Does that mean something? We know Tim is Epic but who is saying the created their own company but no name to it?

@LadyCharlie An understatement since this applies to nearly every aspect of business. You might be looking at a new Great Depression that would make the last one look like a walk in the park.

Now they can work on something that much better

@NintendoJunkie
I cannot speak to conditions at Epic but the unfortunate reality at many companies including the one I contract with presently is a consistent lack of seeing what is coming. Too many in management are reactive as opposed to being proactive. Many companies went from being constantly understaffed and always in crunch to being flush with people because they were fooled by the pandemic economics.

This is the core issue with most companies in the industry. Another issue is downward pressure from stockholders and board members who lack the requisite skills to understand how the creative process and the interchange between programmers, artists and audio/music just to name some of the contributors works. In other words the upper management has slowly been changing into Interchangeable corporate types who focus primarily on profits as they are reviewed and merited on these metrics so it influences their decision in business direction.

This in turn leads to another prevailing issue. Profits now rule most creative decisions and this can lead to rushed product, questionable game mechanics(micro transactions) and market pressures.

The company I contracted with recently make cuts and reductions for many of the same reasons. The industry is in a slump after an unlikely swell from consumers needing pcs, entertainment and diversions during a particularly stressful time. Any decent CEO and board would realize that this could not last and would not last. Also even someone with a basic grasp of economics would know that forcing billions of people to shelter in place would cause an imbalance in the market structure and lead to a massive readjustment in supply and demand.

As someone who has been in the industry a while I can say with an almost certainty there is no crash coming because the factors and the market are completely different then they were at that time. There is and will continue to be a contraction though and the more likely situation will be one of emerging tech trying to move entertainment, including video games, into a more profitable model without the need for specific or branded hardware possibly. This does not mean cloud gaming because we are several decades away from having the infrastructure to support that. The most likely probability is a localized VR/AI in the form of holographic chambers or projection hardware. The headset model will never be sustainable and true revolution has not been seen in quite a while. The current model of gaming has plateaued and so has the real profit growth. I am not sure what you have seen or experienced but I have been fortunate to have seen what some of the largest companies are looking at for future development and it will be a new industry when it happens. When ,is totally dependent on the hardware side of development. These companies are not what you would consider gaming companies but they have already made baby steps publicly while they continue to work on these ideas.

I also left quite a while ago for family reasons but I came back and I do contracting again. It is the right thing to do and I commend you for that. You cannot get that time back.

@Zidentia Epic had, and from I hear from friends still has those issues. They tried their best to predict, but of course no one can really do that. They aren't holden to stock holders, so they at least didn't struggle with that as much. They definitely became more corporate as they grew, which is understandable and natural as a company grows in size. One of the reasons I left was it lost its family feel, I think I was like employee 113 or something.

What do you do in the industry? Programmer, art, design or something else?

Programmer and designer. I worked at a few companies that really felt like a cohesive group or family. It is nice and it’s easy to create something amazing when it is like that. The larger companies are nice as well because you have more resources and better perks but usually your group is siloed and changes are sometimes not fleshed out before the lead sends them out. That is part of it though.

It's so stupid that this keeps happening. And it's not just gaming companies, it's movie theatre's, grocery stores and what have you. The world does not solely revolve around just money, does it? Do we really need money to survive, granted it does help put food on the table, but isn't going THIS far, ridiculous? Hell, even the price of housing is ridiculous, and it's making everyone, (including those who are disabled) live out on the streets, proving the dangers that cost us living on the streets. Corporate greed should've never been a thing