'Fortnite' developer Epic Games cuts 1,000 employees in mass layoffs

Fortnite developer Epic Games laid off over 1,000 employees on Wednesday, cutting a significant chunk of its workforce. In an open letter sent to employees, founder and CEO Tim Sweeney cited financial pressures on the popular multiplayer game as the reason for the layoffs. 

"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," Sweeney wrote in Wednesday's open letter. "This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles puts us in a more stable place."

While Sweeney did not share Fortnite's exact engagement numbers, statistics trackers Fortnite.GG and ActivePlayer.io report that the game's player count has significantly slumped in recent months. For over two years Fortnite's average daily player count surpassed one million every month, reaching a peak of 3.1 million in December 2023. This number fell to approximately 835,000 last September, dropping its average below one million players per day for the first time since June 2023. Player numbers have remained lower than typical in the months since, now struggling to breach one million. 

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In his open letter, Sweeney stated that while the entire games industry is currently under strain, Epic Games is also facing specific challenges regarding Fortnite's return to mobile. Both Apple and Google removed Fortnite from their app stores in 2020 amidst antitrust disputes regarding in-game payments. In 2024, a new EU law forced Apple to reinstate Fortnite on iOS in Europe, with the app also eventually returning to U.S. iPhones in May 2025. Fortnite just made its global return to the Google Play store earlier this month, six years after initially being kicked off.

"Despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season; we're only in the early stages of returning to mobile and optimizing Fortnite for the world's billions of smartphones; and in being the industry's vanguard we have taken a lot of bullets in a battle which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers," said Sweeney.

News of Epic Games' layoffs arrives just two weeks after the company raised prices for Fortnite's in-game currency V-Bucks, stating that the change was "to help pay the bills" after substantial increases in the costs of running the game. 

Epic Games previously laid off around 830 employees at the end of 2023, or 16 percent of its workforce. At the time, Sweeney stated that there would be no more layoffs following this, and that the cuts would "financially stabilize the business." Sadly, this no longer seems to be the case. 

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Sweeney specifically noted that Epic Games' most recent layoffs have nothing to do with AI, indicating that it isn't using the tech to replace employees. Developers and players alike have expressed concern about artificial intelligence in the video game industry, with a recent report finding that one in five new games on Steam use generative AI. In January, publisher Ubisoft announced it is making "accelerated investments behind player-facing Generative AI" amidst ongoing layoffs, while NVIDIA received severe backlash last week for an AI-powered rendering model which players labelled an "AI slop filter."

"Since it's a thing now, I should note that the layoffs aren't related to AI," said Sweeney. "To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can."

Still, it's likely cold comfort for all the developers who have been suddenly put out of a job this week. Laid off Epic Games employees will receive at least four months' base pay, as well as extended healthcare coverage.

The video game industry has been plagued with layoffs in recent years, with big publishers such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, PlayStation, and Xbox all making significant cuts as well. Unfortunately, it seems as though the mass layoffs won't be easing off any time soon.

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