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Epic Games to lay off 1,000 as NC game developer cites Fortnite fall

Visitors stand at the booth of "Lego Fortnite," an open world survival video game, developed and published by Epic Games in association with The Lego Group, during the media day at the Gamescom video games trade fair in Cologne, western Germany on Aug. 21, 2024.  (Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS)
By Brian Gordon News & Observer

RALEIGH, N.C. — Cary, North Carolina, video game developer Epic Games announced Tuesday it will lay off 1,000 workers as the company cited falling player interest in its hit Fortnite franchise.

This is Epic’s second mass jobs cut in the past three years. In September 2023, the company laid off 830 employees companywide, including 170 in the Triangle.

Epic Games did not immediately say how many North Carolina workers were impacted by its latest workforce reduction, which the company informed staff about in a March 24 letter. By Tuesday afternoon, multiple Triangle-based Epic employees had posted on LinkedIn that they had lost their positions.

“I’m sorry we’re here again,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney wrote to employees. “The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we’re spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded.”

Fortnite is a vibrantly colored shooter game that took the global gaming industry by storm after Epic released its “battle royale” version in 2017. “Despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season,” Sweeney wrote.

Now a billionaire, Sweeney cofounded Epic in 1991 and moved it to Cary later that decade. Epic scored wins with its Gears of War series and popular graphics tool, Unreal Engine, but the success of Fortnite elevated the mid-sized studio. In more recent years, the company focused on leveraging Fortnite to offer customers experiences in the metaverse, a network of immersive virtual spaces.

In his letter Tuesday, Epic’s CEO stressed that artificial intelligence did not contribute to the layoffs. He alluded to his antitrust challenges against Apple and Google, costly years-long legal processes that ultimately returned Fortnite to billions of smartphones worldwide. “In being the industry’s vanguard we have taken a lot of bullets in a battle which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers,” Sweeney wrote.

Sweeney said affected workers will get “at least four months of base pay” and that the company will hold a meeting Thursday to discuss Epic’s future direction.

These layoffs come less than a week after another Cary video game developer, Red Storm Entertainment, announced it would cut 105 jobs at its headquarters and stop developing games as its parent company, Ubisoft, seeks to lower spending.