Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney sent a letter to internal employees.displayLayoffs will be carried out to stabilize the company's situation where expenses far exceed revenue, and approximately 16% of employees, or about 830 people, will be affected.
In a related statement, Epic Games stated that it would provide severance pay to affected employees, including six months of base salary and health care expenses. It also plans to accelerate the option for employees to decide whether to sell their holdings before 6, and provide an additional two years for employees to carefully consider whether to sell their holdings.
The layoffs will affect members outside the core development team to ensure the company can continue to operate stably.
Tim Sweeney emphasized that Epic Games had been continuously reducing costs. In addition to suspending external recruitment, it also reduced non-essential external marketing and event miscellaneous expenses, but ultimately had to choose to control costs through layoffs.
In addition to announcing layoffs, Epic Games will also split the company it acquired in 2022.Online music service Bandcamp, plans to resell it to the audio licensing platform Songtradr. In addition, Epic Games is also preparing to spin off SuperAwesome, a child-friendly developer acquired in 2020, and resell part of its business. However, technical resources such as children's online services and parental verification tools will remain, and the advertising business will be transformed into an independent operating company.
Layoffs, splitting, and selling assets will obviously help Epic Games maintain stable operations while also reducing pressure from large external investors such as Tencent and Sony. However, the current lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple, as well as the fact that Fortnite is still unable to be successfully listed on the App Store and Google Play Store, still means that issues affecting revenue still exist.
However, Tim Sweeney said that Epic Games still has significant development opportunities, especially in the future.Unreal Engine 5The games will be launched into the market one after another, and "Fortnite" continues to bring in substantial revenue. In the future, there are plans to connect with the wave of metaverse development. At the same time, it is emphasized that no core business funds will be cut, and plans to continue to grow through these core businesses.
