Epic Games has announced the shocking news that over 1,000 employees are being laid off from today, attributing "the downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025" as the driving force being this massive company-wide shakeup.
CEO Tim Sweeney took to the Epic Games blog to make a statement on the move, whilst also looking ahead for the future of both Epic and Fortnite. Here's some of their statement on the job losses:
"Today we’re laying off over 1000 Epic 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. 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. Some of the challenges we're facing are industry-wide challenges: slower growth, weaker spending, and tougher cost economics; current consoles selling less than last generation's; and games competing for time against other increasingly-engaging forms of entertainment.
And some of our challenges are unique to Epic. 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. Since it's a thing now, 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."
Sweeney goes on to talk about how the company has overcome past troubles, alongside what it intends to do in future to keep Fortnite a successful game in the coming years:
"What we now need to do is clear: 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. 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."
Alongside the announcement of these layoffs, we've also learnt that several Fortnite experiences are wrapping up in 2026 - including the complete closure of the game's Rocket Racing mode; a Fortnite-flavoured spin on Rocket League. That will shut down in October of this year, while Ballistic (a first-person mode) and one specific Fortnite Festival mode will cease to exist in April.
The Epic Games statement closes with assurances that folks affected will receive severance packages, but those are unlikely to soften much of the blow from an absolutely massive amount of job losses here. We hope everyone affected lands on their feet as soon as possible.