(San Francisco) Epic Games, the creator of the wildly popular video game Fortnite, announced a redundancy plan on Thursday to save money even as the company continues to spend funds on its legal battle against Apple and Google.
Posted at 2:34 p.m.
Epic will lay off about 830 people, or 16% of its employees, according to a copy of an email that CEO Tim Sweeney sent to employees and posted on the company’s website.
“We have been spending far more money than we make for some time, investing in Epic’s next release and evolving Fortnite into a metaverse-inspired developer ecosystem,” Mr. Sweeney told employees.
“I was optimistic for a long time that we could move forward without layoffs, but in retrospect I realize that wasn’t realistic. »
Sweeney, who founded the company in the 1990s, said Fortnite has resumed growth but is fueled by creator content, which accounts for a significant portion of the company’s revenue.
“The success of the Creator ecosystem is a major achievement, but represents a major structural change to our economic model,” he said.
According to the general director, layoffs are the only way to stabilize finances, even if they lead to delays in development.
“Some of our products and initiatives are delivered on time, but others are not because they are currently under-resourced,” Sweeney noted.
Although Epic has taken steps to reduce legal costs, the company “continues to fight Apple and Google’s distribution monopolies and taxes,” he also noted.
Epic has been fighting Apple and Google in U.S. courts for years over their respective app stores’ rules and fees that allow consumers to download video games like Fortnite on their smartphones and tablets.
According to the email, Epic also decided to sell Bandcamp, the online music store it acquired early last year, and spin off another entity’s advertising business.