‘Fortnite’ maker Epic Games shedding 16% of workforce

Epic Games, proprietor of the insanely well-liked “Fortnite,” introduced that it’s going to hearth 16% of its staff, affecting 870 folks.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney advised staff in a memo Thursday that the corporate was investing an excessive amount of and making too little: “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. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.”

While Mr. Sweeney lamented the necessity for layoffs, he described them as inevitable and that the corporate had lengthy been working “far short of financial sustainability.” He went on to say the corporate already was spending much less cash on promoting and occasions and severely reducing again on hiring.

“About two-thirds of the layoffs were in teams outside of the core development,” the memo continued. “Some of our products and initiatives will land on schedule, and some may not ship when planned because they are underresourced for the time being. We’re OK with the schedule tradeoff if it means holding on to our ability to achieve our goals, get to the other side of profitability and become a leading metaverse company.”

Epic additionally introduced it’ll in the reduction of investments in such nongaming firms as Bandcamp and SuperAwesome.