Fortnite staff who survived yesterday’s mass cull of workers say they’re unable to comprehend the impact on the game’s future this year “and beyond.”
Yesterday, Epic Games announced it was making 1,000 team members redundant. In a statement, Epic boss Tim Sweeney blamed the job losses on the company “spending significantly more than we’re making” amid a downturn in interest in Fortnite — despite it remaining one of the most popular games in the world.
In the hours that followed, numerous veteran Epic Games employees took to social media to confirm they were among those impacted. This includes senior and long-standing members such as design director Christopher Pope, principle engineer Evan Kinney, and lead writer Nik Blahunka — all of whom had worked on Fortnite’s gameplay, live events and story for years.
Vitaliy Naymushin, a character art director who designed some of Fortnite’s earliest characters including its default mascot Jonesy, was also laid off. As was Devin Connors, the long-standing community manager at Rocket League studio Psyonix.
Reflecting on the losses via a post on social media, Fortnite gameplay producer Robby Williams described yesterday as “a brutal day at Epic” and that “what comes next is very hard and painful” — for those now jobless, but also the company’s remaining staff who will now push on without 1,000 of their colleagues.
“Our teams will have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward,” Williams wrote, “but we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond.
“I’ll continue to do my best to keep making the best game for you,” he continued, “and I’m confident that my peers feel the same, but please be patient with us as we navigate this tough time and do our best in spite of these truly gut-wrenching losses.”
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Yesterday’s layoffs come just a week after the triumphant launch of Fortnite’s long-awaited Chapter 7 Season 2, with the game’s story and gameplay at a fresh high point following a lengthy wait for new content. But it was also clear that Epic Games was not happy with the financial performance of the game in recent months — something which prompted the company to controversially raise the price of its lucrative V-Bucks in-game currency, prompting a huge backlash from players.
“What we now need to do is clear,” Sweeney said yesterday in his message to staff, telling them they needed to “build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events; accelerate developer tools with greater stability and capability as we evolve from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6.”
“We’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season,” Sweeney noted, but teased “the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year.” Sweeney is set to hold a town hall meeting with staff tomorrow, Thursday March 26, to discuss next steps.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
