Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has insisted the company is now “financially sound” after a turbulent period in which 830 workers were laid off.
In September 2023, the North Carolina studio behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine experienced a significant round of layoffs that resulted in 830 employees, or approximately 16% of the workforce, losing their jobs.
Separately, Epic sold music services platform Bandcamp and spun off most of SuperAwesome, a kid-safe tech company. They were acquired by Epic Games in 2022 and 2020, respectively. Approximately 250 people left Epic as a result of the divestment.
Sweeney said at the time that Epic was spending “significantly more money than we make investing in the next evolution of Epic and developing Fortnite as a meta-inspired creator ecosystem.”
He also pointed to a “major structural change in our economy” following Fortnite’s transition from the wildly popular and highly profitable battle royale game that funded its initial expansion to a lower-margin business driven by creator content and a significant share of revenue.
Now, a year later, Sweeney commented on the state of Epic Games and certainly sounded more hopeful. As he reports from his speech during his presentation at Unreal Fest 2024 GI.bizSweeney said Epic has “spent the last year rebuilding itself and being really solid on all fronts.”
He added: “I’m happy to now say that the company is in good financial health and that Fortnite and the Epic Games Store have set new records for simultaneous collaboration and success.”
In this regard, Fortnite reached 110 million monthly vigorous users during the holiday season, which is an impressive milestone for a game that is already seven years aged. For comparison: in August 2018, Fortnite reached 78.3 million MAU.
Epic rarely publicizes Fortnite player numbers, and when it does, it uses a variety of metrics that make direct comparisons hard. Last year’s OG season, which brought back the Chapter 1 Season 5 map along with classic areas like Tilted Towers, Pleasant Park, and Risky Reels, saw Fortnite reach a modern high of 44.7 million players in just one day. Epic previously said it had seen Fortnite parallel a player record of 15.3 million players during the end-of-season live event in December 2020, where players teamed up with Iron Man, Wolverine and other Marvel heroes to defeat Galactus.
Meanwhile, the Epic Games Store, which remains unprofitable as it battles for the hearts and minds of PC gamers with Steam maker Valve, reached 70 million monthly vigorous users last month.
Founded in 1991, Epic Games is best known for creating Unreal engine while also developing a long list of games including Unrealfirst four entries in Gears of War seriesand above all, a free Battle Royale game Fortnite.
Fortnite in particular has proven to be an extremely profitable game for Epic. Fortnite has been reported to be eye-watering in 2021 $9 billion in just two years with 400 million registered users. Since then, Fortnite has spawned numerous games on the platform, including Lego Fortnite, Fortnite Festival, and Rocket Racing.
But in recent years, Sweeney and Epic have become embroiled in a costly legal dispute with tech giants including Apple and Google over the launch of a competing app store for iPhones and Android phones. In August, Sweeney admitted that the fight against Apple and Google had cost Epic about $1 billion. This week, Epic filed another lawsuit, this time against Samsung and Google, over a setting known as AutoBlock that users must disable to install Epic Games and Fortnite.
Photo credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Wesley is the UK news editor at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be reached at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
