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Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

reuters.com

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Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#21

Post by alephnerd »

georgemcbay wrote: post #7
CodingJeebus wrote: post #5

> Today we’re laying off over 1000 Epic employees. I'm sorry we're here again. The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. Layoffs really, really suck, but at least there's not a whiff of the "we're doubling down on AI to boost productivity" cop out that we're seeing across the industry.…

> Layoffs really, really suck, but at least there's not a whiff of the "we're doubling down on AI to boost productivity" cop out that we're seeing across the industry. I agree, though it might also be worth pointing out that for a game company there's some risk in that messaging that doesn't exist for a normal SaaS company. Investors might like to hear it (whether it is the truth or not), but the game-playing audienc…

> it might also be worth pointing out that for a game company there's some risk in that messaging

This.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#22

Post by MisterTea »

There are three other submissions in the queue and likely more on this.

I know someone in Epic and they told me that its no secret inside Epic that Roblox is killing them. Why? He told me a story where a neighbors kid came by and wanted to play Roblox but he told the kid he didn't have Roblox. The child replied "It's easy! I'll show you!" and this 8 year old sat at his PC, downloaded a few MB client, signs in, selects a game and is playing within minutes. The game was a brain dead platform jumping game where you jump to the top of a tower. No enemies. No items. No anything. Just get to the top. Yay. At one point the kid fell down and the game offered to move him back to where he was for $3. Yup a fucking game hit a kid up for hard cash. The people who makes these games are child predators. Scum really.

Epics problem is Unreal can't be easily deployed like Roblox. You want to play Lego star-wars? You need to first download the base Lego game of 30GB then the 20GB Star Wars pack. A Roblox user just downloads a small client, signs in and is ready to play a stupid simple game that isn't 50+ GB. Unfortunately most of those games are not games but attention stealers that entice users to spend real money on NOTHING.

Shame that everything has been boiled down to an attention and money milking scam.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#24

Post by shimman »

rustyhancock wrote: post #13

Quite stunned that Fortnites 5bn per year isn't enough to keep them going. They've been pull about that much in per year since 2019 AFAIK. I really hope this one have knock ons for Unreal Engine or lead to Unity like licensing. Their indie grants are also quite generous.

Of course it's enough, the problem is greed. They must perform ritual sacrifices to appease the market gods.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#25

Post by fidotron »

gonzalohm wrote: post #14
fidotron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, someone has to try. We can't rely on GabeN being (relatively) benign without serious competition.

Everyone has tried already. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Epic...

I was at EA during peak Origin mania and the defining regret of my career is not having slapped sense into the appropriate people when I had the opportunity to do so.

We really did have a far better shot at it than even most insiders appreciated (to the point rival companies would tell me to my face how confused they were by the apparent failure to execute), however, the core team were more interested in fighting over who would take credit for it when it succeeded than ever ensuring that it would.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#27

Post by jeffreportmill1 »

The CEO is worth 7B+. 1000 employees at 100k/yr would cost him 100M - less than his net worth fluctuates on any given day and only 20% of other costs savings they have identified.

Executives care little about the stakeholders: the employees, the customers, the community. It's their company, too. They only care about investors and themselves. People who "own" pay a lower tax rate than those that "work". Let's fix that and make things great again.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#29

Post by bakugo »

MisterTea wrote: post #22

There are three other submissions in the queue and likely more on this. I know someone in Epic and they told me that its no secret inside Epic that Roblox is killing them. Why? He told me a story where a neighbors kid came by and wanted to play Roblox but he told the kid he didn't have Roblox. The child replied "It's easy! I'll show you!" and this 8 year old sat at his PC, downloaded a few MB client, signs in, select…

No, Epic's problem is that they saw Roblox's success and went "we deserve that too because we say so, let's go all-in on this market that is already dominated by an established player!"

Roblox isn't killing Epic, Epic is killing itself by desperately trying to steal Roblox's players when they have no reason to stop playing Roblox. Even if they released a 50MB Fortnite client that streams low quality assets like Roblox, it would be no different because those kids would simply keep playing what everyone else is already playing. Tim Sweeney making another tweet about his metaverse or whatever isn't going to change that.

Re: Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls

#30

Post by ido »

fidotron wrote: post #23

With the downturn in Fortnite (and with it the dream of Fortnite as a platform), and apparent failure of Meta Horizon (at least on the Quest) . . . does that mean the entire concept of a 3D metaverse type UI is dead for another generation?

Roblox
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