Epic Games, the company behind the Unreal Engine and more notably, the live service game that changed the industry, Fortnite, has announced that it will be laying off 16% of its workforce.
This also coincides with a raise in prices for Fortnite’s premium currency that drives its microtransactions, V-Bucks. According to Epic Games chief executive officer Tim Sweeny, the layoffs are a result of Epic “spending way more money than we earn.”
“I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see this was unrealistic.” Sweeny said in a message to Epic Games staff.
There are reportedly no more direct layoffs planned, but Epic will lose another 250 employees through the sale of music website Bandcamp and marketing group SuperAwesome.
More layoffs are incredibly unfortunate to see, it’s been a poor year for the games industry in this since, particularly with Embracer Group closing down whole studios on top of other layoffs.
Hopefully Sweeny is right in saying there won’t be any more layoffs at Epic.
Source – [Bloomberg]