Rumor: Epic Games Lays Off About 900 Employees - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 October 2023 / 3,329 Views
Epic Games has laid off about 900 employees, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke with Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.
The sources claim the layoffs, which is equal to 16 percent of Epic Games' workforce, were sent in a memo to staff.
Employees laid off will receive six months of severance and health insurance, as well as accelerated stock vesting.
Epic Games is the developer for the battle royale game, Fortnite, is the creator of the Unreal Engine, and runs the Epic Games Store.
Until an official announcement is made this should be treated as a rumor.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I guess throwing millions upon millions for EGS exclusivity and weekly free games has not been paying off. Didn't they also JUST offer a 100% revenue cut for devs if they make their games EGS exclusive for 6 months??? I wonder if EGS turning profitable by 2027 is looking more and more like a pipedream for Tim. Damn shame to see such mass layoffs like this......I hope everyone is able to get back on their feet quickly.
Alan Wake 2 is going to be the first real reason, aside from Fortnite, to use EGS. So let's see how much this turns the tides for the storefront.
Hard to blame PC gamers when Epic has done practically nothing to keep players returning to the storefront. It's an online store that you can buy games at, and that's literally it for 5 years now. Wasting arguably hundreds of millions of dollars over the years for exclusivity deals without improving the storefront will get players to make a temporary switch, but features will keep players there. Even GOG has been able to carve out its own share of the PC market.
I mean, EGS still doesn't even have basic features like forums or user reviews for christ's sake lmao
That is a pretty big layoff, 16% of their workforce. Guessing that Epic Store is to blame, because Fortnite still seems very successful and Unreal 5 signups are probably at a high right now after Unity shit the bed.
Apparently a big chunk of the layoffs are at Mediatonic, the Fallguys developer that Epic bought.
What? How? They're not a huge studio.
Was. I tweeted, or xeeted, to Jason Schreier about how big Mediatonic was, and he replied to me that the studio hovered around 300 employees total. He mentioned the studio was hit very hard, but not near 300. I'm personally guessing somewhere around 100 employees may have been laid off. I would consider that very hard, but not near 300.
Sad to see either way. Fall Guys was such a huge success.
