Fortnite Maker Epic Games Laying Off 830 Employees

(IGN) – Epic Games, the North Carolina-based studio behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine, has suffered a significant round of layoffs.

First reported by Bloomberg, Epic Games is laying off 830 employees, or about 16 percent of its workforce. Epic Games shared a memo CEO Tim Sweeney sent out to staff in a new blog post.

The memo reveals Epic is “divesting” music service platform Bandcamp and will spin off most of SuperAwesome, a kid-safe technology company. Both were acquired by Epic Games in 2022 and 2020, respectively.

Founded in 1991, Epic Games is best known for creating Unreal Engine and has developed a long list of games, including Unreal, the first four entries in the Gears of War series, and most notably the free-to-play battle royale game Fortnite.

Fortnite, in particular, has become an extremely profitable game for Epic. In 2021, Fortnite was reported to have generated $9 billion in two years and had 400 million registered users at the time.

News of layoffs comes just weeks after Epic’s Chief Fortnite Architect Donald Mustard announced his departure, with Charlie Wen, a Marvel veteran who helped design God of War protagonist Kratos, replacing him.

Epic Games was embroiled in a legal feud with tech giants Apple and Google. However, Epic lost the case in 2021, with the ruling upheld by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year. Epic recently requested the U.S. Supreme Court weigh in on the antitrust case.