Fortnite developer Epic Games has announced it is laying off 1,000 staff, due to a “downturn in engagement” in its evergreen battle royale.
In a message to staff shared publicly this morning, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney said the company was “spending significantly more than we’re making”, meaning that it now needed to make “major cuts to keep the company funded.”
The news comes just a week after the launch of Fortnite’s highly-anticipated new battle royale season, and two weeks after the company controversially raised the price of the game’s lucrative V-Bucks in-game currency, prompting a huge backlash from players.
“Today we’re laying off over 1,000 Epic employees,” Sweeney told Epic Games employees. “I’m sorry we’re here again. 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.” Today’s layoffs are being accompanied by “over $500 million of identified cost savings” in contracting and marketing, he continued, while the hiring of some roles will cease.
“Some of the challenges we’re facing are industry-wide challenges,” Sweeney wrote, blaming “slower growth, weaker spending, and tougher cost economics.” Discussing that last point in more detail, Sweeney said that current consoles were selling less than last generation, and noted that games were increasingly competing for time against other forms of entertainment.
“And some of our challenges are unique to Epic,” he continued. “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.”
Originally launched back in 2017 as a simple PVE zombie shooter, Fortnite blew up in popularity when its developers quickly launched a battle royale component, following the success of PUBG. The years that followed saw Fortnite capitalize on its success and become a pop culture phenomenon, home to record-breaking live events and concerts, and crossovers with the world’s biggest entertainment franchises.
Today, Fortnite is a platform where its battle royale is just one gameplay mode among many, but its success has paled compared to the enormous playerbase of Roblox, while Epic’s own efforts to grow Fortnite beyond its shooter origins have had mixed fortunes. The company’s December 2023 Big Bang relaunch which introduced LEGO, racing and music modes did not grow the game’s playerbase as hoped, and subsequent launches (including an upcoming competitive Arena option) have stuck closer to Fortnite’s shooter origins.
In a separate announcement today, Epic Games said its Pysonix-made Rocket Racing mode would go offline permanently later this year after previously being mothballed. Two other modes will be culled next month, meanwhile: Festival Battle Stage, a more competitive take on its main Harmonix-made music offering, and Fortnite Ballistic, an attempt at making a tactical shooter.
Today’s layoffs include high profile and long-standing Fortnite team members, including principal engineer Evan Kinney, who posted his reaction on social media and said he was “confused and bewildered” at being “thrown out” after years working on the game and its popular live events.
i have done so much for this company and our games
so many late nights
so many weekends
so many live events, and competitive events, and new features, and new seasonssolid performance reviews every time
with multiple people mentioning how critical i am and what an impact i…— Evanosaurus “Unrawrl Engine 5.7” Rex (@evankinney) March 24, 2026
“What we now need to do is clear,” Sweeney continued 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. And we’ll be kicking off the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year.
“This isn’t our first time being here, he continued. “Epic survived upheavals in 1990’s with the move from 2D to 3D with Unreal 1; in the 2000’s building console games with Gears of War; and in 2012 moving to online gaming with Paragon and Fortnite. Each time, we rebuilt our foundations and earned a renewed leadership position.
“Market conditions today are the most extreme we’ve seen since those early days, with massive upheaval in the industry accompanied by massive opportunity for the companies that come out as winners on the other side. That’s what we’re aiming to do for our players, and we aim to bring other like-minded developers in the industry along on the journey to build an increasingly open and vibrant future of entertainment together.”
On the topic of AI, Sweeney noted specifically that its rise in prominence within game development was not a factor here. “The layoffs aren’t related to AI,” he noted. “To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can.”
Concluding his message, Sweeney described the layoffs as “very painful”, and noted that impacted staff would receive at least four months of base pay and healthcare coverage, as well accelerated stock options. Epic Games last held a major round of layoffs in 2023, when it made 830 staff redundant — around 16% of its workforce at the time. Following that, the company was believed to employ a little over 4,000 people — suggesting that today’s mass layoffs have impacted almost a quarter of the company.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
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