In a blog post on its website this morning, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced that the company will be laying off over 1,000 employees following a downturn in Fortnite engagement over the course of 2025. Writing, “we’re spending significantly more than we’re making,” it seems Sweeney’s genius idea is to make employees redundant rather than figure out why the nearly decade old game isn’t as popular as it used to be. To this end, Sweeney has apparently found “over $500 million” of savings across the company and Fortnite.
Elaborating further on Twitter, Epic will be shuttering Rocket Racing, Festival Battle Stage, and Ballistic game modes in Fortnite over the next few months. Rocket Racing is scheduled for shutdown in October 2026 while Ballistic and Festival Battle Stage will close on April 16th, 2026. Rocket Racing Quests will cease next week with no further Ranked rewards planned for the season, though the mode will be accessible until sometime in October.
To assuage some of the fan ire, Sweeney states that these layoffs are not a result of AI. “Since it’s a thing now,” Sweeney writes, “I should note that the layoffs aren’t related to AI. To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can.” He then takes the time to talk up improvements coming to Unreal Engine 5 and what the future might hold for Unreal Engine 6, likely made off the back of employees that are no longer working for the company.
At least in some form of solace, all affected individuals will receive six months of severance pay with accelerated stock options through to January 2027. They will also receive extended equity exercise options for two years. I don’t know if that’s really enough to replace a stable income, but it’s better than absolutely nothing.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
