Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by imtringued » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:18 AM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #440

keyringlight wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help thinking the battle was lost before it even started, no matter how good the offering was because the PC and mobile platforms (where epic operate their store) have 99.9% already decided who owns them. The way I see it Epic wanted to copy what Counter-strike and HL2 was to Steam, but using Fortnite to push their store for a fresh generation of gamers. The problem is they couldn't replace or exist alongside…

Epic games goes out of their way to be hostile to Linux users. I'm at the point where I just ignore windows only games. And I'm the exact type of person they'd want to convert cause I tell all my friends about my gaming experiences. They could even take proton and use it in their store.

This is basically my opinion as well. There are enough games that run on Linux that I don't have time to play them all, so if the game is windows only I skip it.

The steam chat app is kind of terrible and there was a Linux UI bug that caused UI lag a few years ago. Epic Games just can't replicate the goodwill.

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

#522

Post by LtdJorge » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #519

ryandrake wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't want all these app stores!! The ideal number of app stores I want installed on my computer is ZERO. I don't want to have to load a damn "store" just to obtain and run your game. I am willing to angrily live with ONE store on my computer, Steam, but no way in hell am I going to tolerate having to have an Epic Store and a Microsoft Store and an Activision Store and a goddamn Rockstar Store and an Ubi Store…

I don't know why "zero" is ideal. That means going back to the old days where every single company would need their own launcher. Having a separate company focus on distribution sounds more ideal. Epic Games had an opportunity here to erode the app store margins through standardization, instead, they've become a copycat of what they resented with a slightly smaller cut.

A very bad copycat

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

#523

Post by jasondigitized » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:27 AM UTC

xeromal wrote: post #456

jasondigitized wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. You need to fire your CFO immediately if you don't have billions of dollars in cash after the run you just had on Fortnite.

They could have loads of money and still would need to tighten their belt once usage drops. I could have 100ks in my savings accounts but if my hours / salary was reduced at work, I would still reduce my spending. It's just being smart.

Yes, and that's what a good CFO is hired to do.

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

#524

Post by mxfh » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:31 AM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #502

mxfh wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what contractors are?!

Yes. Do you have any evidence they use contractors for Steam?

Can you do basic math on the number of support tickets Valve is handling to answer that question for yourself?

if not:

https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=113#:~:text=The...

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

#525

Post by imtringued » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:42 AM UTC

llyama wrote: post #438

Ethee wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still funny to me that they would rather burn 9 figures in cash on these silly deals to try and 'trap' gamers on their platform instead of just... I don't know... making a better platform? The reason nobody competes with Steam is simply the sheer number of integration and platform features that make it easy to buy, play and share games with my friends. It's not that hard, stop trying to 'force' me to use your pl…

A big reason it feels like nobody competes with steam is that if you want to sell your game on steam it can't be cheaper elsewhere. So any other store can't compete on price. If you don't sell your game on steam you are missing 90% of the market. So as long as Valve continue to make steam good enough, nobody has an incentive to switch. It's an abusive monopoly. Steam take 30% of revenue from developers and Epic take…

Are you seriously blaming Steam for game developers setting the price of their games the same on all platforms? They're the ones pocketing that 18% difference by the way and that 18% difference is literally the selling point that is supposed to lure in game developers to the epic games store. There has never been a promise of cheaper games.

The "most favored nation" pricing you're complaining about being abusive refers to Steam key sales on third party platforms and that pricing exists for a blatantly obvious reason. How much of a percentage does Valve get from that sale? 0%. Absolutely nothing. The developer generated keys are free and Valve will still pay the distribution costs (storefront, downloads, multiplayer, etc) for you. If it was possible to sell a Steam key cheaper on another platform, then nobody would buy Steam keys from the Steam store anymore, which means their revenue would tank to zero, which in turn means they would have to cancel free steam key generation, duh. Valve is being extremely accommodating here and you're twisting it into its opposite, which is pretty disgusting.

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

#526

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:42 AM UTC

singron wrote: post #268

Epic's 2019 P&L was published as part of Epic v. Apple. According to that: * Fortnight revenue was $5.5B in 2018 and $3.8B in 2019 * Employee counts in those years: 1063 and 1932 * Average "People" cost per employee: $141K, $142K (CPI adjusted is $182K in 2026). * Average "Production & Hosting" cost per employee: $189K, $150K (CPI $248K, $194K) * Platform royalty expenses were 25% of total game revenue * Slightly und…

[deleted]

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

#527

Post by Reason077 » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:43 AM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #472

Reason077 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”Sorry, HOW?!? How can a company like Epic games … be losing money with a product that is so mature?” I’ve been playing Fortnite a bit lately, after my nieces got me into it. One thing is that although the player counts are high (always hundreds of thousands of players online, just in the main Battle Royale game), the average revenue per player can’t be that high. For one thing, once you’ve bought the $10 battle pa…

> you only need to average maybe 1 or 2 games per day to earn enough vbucks to buy the next season’s battle pass with vbucks. So if you stay active you can pay once then play the game free forever and still get access to a huge amount of free cosmetics. And much of the player base is kids who are just begging their parents/uncles to buy them stuff in the game rather than spend money themselves because they don’t have…

Honestly, Fortnite is run pretty responsibly. It's not bad at all compared to some of the other nonsense that's out there. Everything in the store is straightforward and fair. No gacha/gambling mechanics, no “pay to win”, no insanely priced super rare items.

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

#528

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:44 AM UTC

tracerbulletx wrote: post #377

Anvoker wrote: post #79

Often when I see layoffs like this, I can't help but think "Wow that company has so many employees and yet, in practice, does so little". This perhaps a rather uncharitable sentiment, but I can't help but have it. Yes, Unreal Engine keeps getting improved, more Fortnite content gets produced. But there is a general lack of innovation, one that I find personally painful when I look at Epic's recent-ish track record. N…

Why the good god do so many people care if business is effcient. If businesses were maximally efficient we'd all be starving to death or working at red line hanging on by a thread with no slack at a job to avoid staving to death, while like 5000 people live like gods.

How much would food cost if grocery stores and all the infrastructure up the food chain were not efficient? Would that result in starving?

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

#529

Post by imtringued » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:57 AM UTC

crummy wrote: post #293

dgeiser13 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true than Epic would have eaten Steam's lunch.

or network effects are keeping people on a worse platform?

That's a weird way of saying "lack of competition". As others have mentioned, why should Epic Games bother supporting Linux?

Considering that I'm gaming on Linux, the number of competitors is pretty small and close to zero, I'm not sure why I should be forced to switch operating systems to support the "better platform".

I say this as someone who's been running Vortex/Skyrim modding on Linux years before there was official support for it and I'm kind of shocked honestly to hear that people are cheering for something I did so long ago (5 years to be precise) I hardly remember the time doing it.

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

#530

Post by orloffm » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 11:01 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #87

> "We're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded," he said. Sorry, HOW?!? How can a company like Epic games with one of the most successful gaming products of the last few decades be losing money with a product that is so mature? Almost every other games developer would love to be in their position on Fortnite but they've somehow turned that into a loss…

Cosmetics suck. It's all the same rehashed "urban style" characters with the same design again and again. I don't want to buy those. I've bought some video game characters like Geralt, but that's it. They can do historical figures, old movie characters, national costumes and songs, maybe something military etc., but they don't. And I don't want to buy battle passes recently, they are boring and stupid, all those items from them only clutter the inventory that you have to clean manually.