Epic Games Lays Off Over 800 Employees

Epic Games laid off around 16% its employees, which translates to approximately 830 job losses.

Tim Sweeney explained the layoffs in a post by Epic’s president. The cost-cutting measures include selling Bandcamp (which it purchased last year) and spinning SuperAwesome as an independent company. Epic purchased SuperAwesome back in 2020. Due to these divestitures, Epic will lose 250 employees. 

“For a while now, 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,” Sweeney writes in his statement. “I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.”

Sweeney explains then that Epic failed to achieve financial stability despite measures taken by Epic, including reducing marketing and events. Layoffs are the only way forward. Sweeney says that the two thirds of terminations are from outside teams and these will not affect game development. Sweeney also says this will be the only round of layoffs and that Epic will still be hiring for “critical roles.” Development of content for titles such as Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League will continue as planned. 

Impacted employees will receive severance packages of six months of base pay and six months Epic-paid healthcare for workers based in the U.S., Canada, and Brazil. Epic offers workers the opportunity to speed up the vesting of stock options through 2024, while also adding an additional two years to the current time frame. U.S. employees can also vest any unearned profit sharing from their 401k. Epic offers Visa and Career Transition Services.

Next month, a large company meeting will be held to review the efforts and goals of the organization. The layoffs follow the announcement of Donald Mustard’s retirement as Epic’s Chief creative officer and Fortnite director.