Epic Games, the creator of Unreal Engine and the ludicrously popular Fortnite, is reportedly laying off 16% of its workforce, which works out at around 900 employees.
The news comes via Bloomberg, with a person familiar with the matter stating that an internal announcement of the job cuts was sent out in a staff memo. In the memo, CEO Tim Sweeney stated “For a while now, we’ve been 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.”
A total of 870 employees will be affected, and Sweeney states that no more job cuts are being planned beyond this. Around two-thirds of the cuts are said to be within teams that lie outside of Epic’s ‘core development’.
That said, one of the staff members affected was Ed Fear, director and writer at Mediatonic, who worked on titles such as Murder by Numbers. Mediatonic was founded in 2005 and was acquired by Epic Games in 2021.
To coincide with this news, it’s also recently been revealed that the price of Fortnite’s V-Bucks will be increasing in October, with Epic stating that the ‘adjustments are based on economic factors such as inflation and currency fluctuations’.
Here’s how the changes will be reflected going forward:
- 1,000 V-Bucks – $8.99 (currently $7.99)
- 2,800 V-Bucks – $22.99 (currently $19.99)
- 5,000 V-bucks – $36.99 (currently $31.99)
- 13,500 V-bucks- $89.99 (currently $79.99)
Late last year, Epic Games had agreed to pay a total of $540 million over allegations from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations that the company had implemented ‘dark patterns’ to dupe users into making unintentional purchases.
What do you make of these potential redundancies over at Epic Games? Leave a comment with your thoughts below.
https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2023/09/...employees/