Just yesterday, Epic Games announced that it had laid off more than 1,000 employees from across the company, as well as cutting over $500 million in contracting, marketing, and closing job posts. According to CEO Tim Sweeney, Epic is still "spending significantly more than [it's] making," despite the company running one of the most popular games in history, Fortnite, and Unreal Engine, which is used widely across the industry.
Sweeney put this down to Fortnite's ongoing "downturn" in engagement and "current consoles selling less than last generation's." Only a passing reference to Epic's years-long legal disputes with Apple and Google, which ultimately resulted in victory for Epic at a high cost.
Naturally, after laying off more than 1,000 employees, Sweeney went to X to explain that, "In the coming days, employers will see a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks."
In the coming days, employers will see a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks. An important thing to understand is that Epic never lowered our hiring standards as we grew, and the layoff wasn't a performance-based "rightsizing" as companies call it nowadays. It's… https://t.co/3SvyWNC04kMarch 25, 2026
Sweeney goes on to say that "Epic never lowered [its] hiring standards as [it] grew, and the layoff wasn't a performance-based 'rightsizing'... It's a sound bet that anyone with Epic Games on their resume is in the top few percent of their discipline."
And… he's not wrong on that account, I guess, but I'm not sure the affected staff will share the same self-righteous tone. Epic sure did lay off some very talented people, such as:
- Game producer Paige Dugre, who worked on the C7S2 and C6S3 maps, The Simpsons mini-season, and much more
- Principal engineer Evan Kinney, responsible for game security and helped shape various events, replay mode, and the upcoming rivalry system (which they say they spent the last week debugging while recovering from pneumonia)
- Character art lead Vitaliy Naymushin, who created Jonesy (the face of Fortnite), and other characters like Ramirez, Penny, Kyle, and so on
- Senior environmental artist George Sokol working on Fortnite for two years, including on Arenas and Ballistic modes
- Lead writer Nik Blahunka, who helped develop the story, world, and characters of the original Save the World and the subsequent battle royale mode for over 10 years
- Marketing manager Stephen Thompson, who's worked on Fortnite for over seven years
With Sweeney's memo yesterday laying out a clear goal to "build awesome Fortnite experiences" and "accelerate developer tools" with Unreal Engine, that can't be easy with many key people missing. And that's just six of the over 1,000 employees let go.
