Fortnite maker now "financially sound" after mass layoffs

A year after 830 people lost jobs.

Epic Games is now "financially sound" after shedding around 830 staff during last year's mass layoff, founder Tim Sweeney has said.

Speaking last night during a stage presentation at Unreal Fest, Sweeney briefly acknowledged the job losses as the show opened, before going on to mention last year's high watermark of engagement with the hugely-lucrative Fortnite, that featured a massively successful throwback "OG" season.

"Last year's Unreal Fest began with some sad news," Sweeney said. "The company had to get its finances in order, and we just had some major layoffs. We spent the last year rebuilding and also really executing solidly on all fronts.

"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. Fortnite hit 110 million monthly active users last holiday, an all-time peak."

It's worth noting that Fortnite player numbers have dropped back down since then, and the launch of last year's new modes have had mixed success, though Lego Fortnite in particular remains popular.

Epic Games remains hugely busy, with ongoing work across the ubiquitous Unreal Engine and its UEFN toolset for building and launching games in Fortnite, the growth of Epic Game Store, and a fresh legal battle announced this week with Google and Samsung.

On UEFN, new modes developed by Epic Games using the technology for Fortnite were mentioned - an all-new experience set to arrive in the game this year, and a new version of the popular Fortnite Reload mode, due in the next few weeks.

And on the Epic Game Store, a new "Launch Everywhere with Epic" offer will trim Epic's existing royalty from five to 3.5 percent from 1st January 2025, to incentivise launching on its storefront. This will apply to games available on Epic's platform first or at the same time as other platforms such as Steam.