After Laying Off 830 Employees, Tim Sweeney Says Fortnite Maker Epic Is Now ‘Financially Sound’
Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has insisted the company is now “financially sound” after a tumultuous period in which 830 staff were laid off.
In September 2023, the North Carolina studio behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine suffered a significant round of layoffs that saw 830 employees, about 16% of its workforce, lose their jobs.
Separately, Epic divested music service platform Bandcamp and spun off most of SuperAwesome, a kid-safe technology company. These were acquired by Epic Games in 2022 and 2020, respectively. Around 250 people left Epic through the divestitures.
At the time, Sweeney said Epic had been spending “way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators.”
He also pointed to a “major structural change to our economics” after Fortnite growth transitioned from the explosively popular and highly profitable battle royale that funded its initial expansion, to the lower margin business that came from creator content with significant revenue sharing.
I’m happy to tell you now that the company is financially sound.
Now, a year later, Sweeney has commented on the state of Epic Games, and he certainly sounded more bullish. Speaking during a presentation at Unreal Fest 2024, as reported by GI.biz, Sweeney said that Epic “spent the last year rebuilding and really executing solidly on all fronts.”
He added: “I’m happy to tell you now that the company is financially sound, and that Fortnite and the Epic Games Store have hit new records in concurrency and success.”
On that front, Fortnite hit 110 million monthly active users over the holidays, an impressive milestone for a game now seven years old. To put that into context, in August 2018 Fortnite hit 78.3 million MAUs.
Epic rarely makes Fortnite player numbers public, and when it does so it uses various metrics that make direct comparisons difficult. Last year’s Season OG, which brought back the Chapter 1 Season 5 map and with it classic areas like Tilted Towers, Pleasant Park, and Risky Reels, saw Fortnite hit a new peak of 44.7 million players in just one day. Epic previously said Fortnite saw a concurrent player record of 15.3 million players for the December 2020 end-of-season live event, which saw players teaming up with Iron Man, Wolverine, and other Marvel heroes to defeat Galactus.
Meanwhile, the Epic Games Store, which remains unprofitable as it battles with Steam maker Valve for the hearts and minds of PC gamers, reached 70 million monthly active users last month.
Founded in 1991, Epic Games is best known for creating Unreal Engine while developing 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 proved extremely profitable game for Epic. In 2021, Fortnite was reported to have generated an eye-watering $9 billion in just two years off the back of 400 million registered users. Since then Fortnite has spawned multiple games within the platform, including Lego Fortnite, Fortnite Festival, and Rocket Racing.
However, in recent years Sweeney and Epic have become embroiled in a costly legal feud with tech giants including Apple and Google over the launch of a competing app store for iPhones and Android phones. In August, Sweeney admitted fighting Apple and Google had cost Epic about $1 billion. And just this week, Epic launched another lawsuit, this time against Samsung and Google, over a setting known as Auto Blocker that users must turn off to install Epic Games and Fortnite.
Image credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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