Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, is laying off 16% of its employees

 Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, is laying off 16% of its employees

One of the most popular video games in the world, Fortnite, is created by Epic Games, which is eliminating 870 employees, or around 16% of its workforce.

Additionally, it is selling Bandcamp, the recently purchased online music platform.

Epic claimed in a note to colleagues that despite efforts to reduce expenses, the company was still "spending way more money than we earn".

CEO Tim Sweeney wrote, "We came to the conclusion that layoffs are the only way, and that conducting them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances.

"Epic people all around the world have been working hard to decrease expenses, including switching to net zero employment and lowering operating expenditures on areas like marketing and events.

But even so, we fell well short of maintaining our financial viability.

He declared that Bandcamp was integrating with Songtradr, an organization that supports musicians.

Bandcamp gained notoriety as a site where independent musicians could earn more money from their music than on streaming services, but when Epic bought the company in 2022, there were questions about how the two companies would work together.

This announcement implies that those reservations were valid.

Offices for Epic are located all around the world, including the UK. The locations of the job losses are not yet revealed.

However, Mr. Sweeney claimed that the positions were being eliminated "without compromising development or our core business lines."

Two-thirds of the layoffs, he continued, occurred in teams "outside of core development".

Fortnite and Gears of War are just a couple of the popular games that use Epic's gaming engine, Unreal Engine.

With 400 million registered users globally, Fortnite is incredibly popular.