Yesterday’s layoff of more than 1,000 employees at Epic Games was driven in part by behind-the-scenes issues with Fortnite: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said that “despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season.” Very roughly, 20% of Epic’s workforce was let go—the studio said just over 4,000 people remained at Epic following the layoff—and in the wake of that very deep cut, Fortnite producer Robby Williams is asking for patience while developers “pick up the pieces” and try to figure out what comes next.
“I appreciate the outcry of support and empathy that I’ve seen from the community today, and I just ask that you please show as much love as you can offer to those that were impacted. None of them deserve this and it’s not at all reflective of their work or their impact,” Williams wrote in a thread on X (via Eurogamer).
“What comes next is very hard and painful. Our teams will have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward but we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond.
“I’ll continue to do my best to keep making the best game for you, and i’m confident that my peers feel the same, but please be patient with us as we navigate this tough time and do our best in spite of these truly gut-wrenching losses.”
(Image credit: Robby Williams (Twitter))
Maybe I’ve just grown too accustomed to receiving “no comment” or stone silence when I ask people about things, but I’m honestly a little surprised that an Epic developer is speaking so freely on such a sensitive topic. Because Williams’ thread paints a remarkable picture of, if not chaos, then at least uncomfortable uncertainty in the wake of layoffs that clearly caught everyone by surprise.
This will hopefully be a temporary state of affairs. Sweeney said in the layoff announcement that Epic will hold a company meeting on March 26 “to talk about the roadmap in more detail,” so developers may receive some clarity about the path forward then. At this point, though, the sheer scale of the bloodletting means it sounds like Fortnite, and the Fortnite dev team, could be in for a rough year.
