Epic Games Boss Says Firm Now 'Financially Sound', Following the Firing of Over 800 Staff

Good news for some

by Khayl Adam 4am

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney says the firm is now "financially sound" following a tumultuous year which, announced last September, involved the company shedding some 830 to 870 staff. That's despite the Fortnite and Unreal Engine developer making billions in revenue in the interim, which is estimated to grow an additional 30% over the next year. Sweeney made the remarks yesterday at Unreal Fest 2024, as relayed by GamesIndustry.biz.

In addition, Sweeney revealed that Fortnite managed a new peak milestone over the holidays, reaching a frankly astonishing 110 million monthly active users. Released in 2018, the undeniably enduring game managed to pull almost 45 million players in a single day with Fortnite OG.

The reduction of around 16% of its workforce comes at a transitional time for the company, which has (admittedly) been very successful at capitalising on Fortnite's explosive initial rise and continued dominance. These days, as IGN chronicles, Epic Games is more concerned with the lower margins but far safer returns allowed by its content creation platforms and user revenue sharing. At Unreal Fest, Sweeney crowed: "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."

Are you surprised by Fortnite's staying power and Epic's ability to keep so many people playing? Are you glad to know the company's having a banger year? Let us know in the comments section below.

[source gamesindustry.biz, via ign.com]

Khayl Adam is Push Square's roving Australian correspondent, a reporter tasked with scouring the internet for the richest, most succulent PlayStation stories. With five years of experience as a freelance journalist and mercenary wordsmith, RPGs are his first great love, but strategy and tactics games are a close second, genres in which he is only too happy to specialize.

1
nessisonett
4:09am

If sacking 800 odd staff took your billion dollar company from financially unsound to financially stable, that shows that you’re a sh*t CEO.

2
Waluigi451
4:10am

Capitalism at its finest, huh? Sheesh, how on earth was Epic supposedly not “financially sound” with what Fortnite pulls in.

3
LuXifer
4:12am

I'm waaay to stupid to understand how they can't be financially sound without firing all those people. Where does all the money go?

Or are we talking about "financially sound" for shareholders and investors, aka arrow must always point up, up, up?

> Fortnite making billions of revenue
> Sweeney "Ahhh. It's time to trim the fat so i can buy another yacht and mansion 🤑"

5
Savage_Joe
4:29am

This sounded like when the avoidant dumps their perfectly loving partner just to feel relief. Epic will do this again.

6
OthmaneAD
4:34am

@Waluigi451 you don't realize how much money epic invests in the epicgamesstore especially for free games. Fortnite racking billions doesn't matter if they have thousands of staff that are paid more than 100k a year and sony/microsoft/nintendo take 30% of that fortnite revenue anyway.

7
Jtheripper
4:46am

The usual agendas of the super rich..
All goes up,,and the ones under low can ....

Well this shows how terrible Tim Sweeney is at his job if having the most profitable game in the world with the most players isn't good enough and he was just getting by, basically pinching pennies till he fired all those people.

9
rjejr
5:01am

@nessisonett Disney alone gave them $1.5Billion earlier this year and they still had to fire 800+ people? 🤑

https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/the-context-behind-disneys-investment-into-epic-games#:~:text=Disney%20announced%20it%20is%20investing,entertainment%20universe%20connected%20to%20Fortnite%E2%80%9D.

I know the class war is over and we lost but some of these guys need a swift kick to the gonads. 🤬

10
NEStalgia
5:13am

There really needs to be some form of legal checks and balances that make these kinds of statements impossible for publicly traded companies. Private business? No problem. Public companies? Mass layoffs need investigations and legal accountability as to the finances of the company and it's use.. want to be public? That's the risk.

Meanwhile Microsoft cannot say the same 👀

12
Yousef-
6:07am

@PuppetMaster @NEStalgia the banana thumbnail is appropriate cuz these guys are huge dicks

After all the parents bank accounts epic have been raping etc and now they are financially sound? WOW! @rjejr how dare you gender assume somebody/something...

@khayladam I thought Fortnite was released in 2017…? Is this some other version?

15
Ralizah
6:27am

Par for the course for an American tech company in 2024, unfortunately.

I don't know the lore of Fortnite.

...there's a race of banana people with a monarch?

16
gollumb82
22m ago

Tim Sweeney and Epic are on my blacklist of companies/people I don’t buy from ever since they sacrificed Unreal/Unreal Tournament for Fortnite. I realise that this won’t change anything and people playing Fortnite will still play it 😛

17
Ainu20
14m ago

Happy to announce that "Fortnite and the Epic Games Store have hit new records in concurrency and success" and made billions in revenue, but still needed to lay of 800+ people to be financially sound.

Does anyone actually believe a single word coming out of all these exec's mouths? I'm sure all those who lost their job are delighted to hear about all the milestones and peaks their ex-employer reached while they were still working there.