![]() Both stores take a top-line cut of 30% of all transactions, much to the dismay of many developers.Īfter instituting a hot fix that circumvented Apple and Google’s payment processors in the “Fortnite” game on iOS and Android in August 2020, both marketplaces banned the app from the store. ![]() ![]() In 2020, the company began a campaign against Apple and Google to push back against the iOS App Store and Android Google Play stores’ take rates from publishers. ![]() The company is reportedly valued at $32 billion. But following its 2018 success, it also began publishing other titles and acquired “Rocket League” developer Psyonix, “Fall Guys” developer Mediatonic and Harmonix, best known as the original developers of “Rock Band” and the “Guitar Hero” series. Prior to “Fortnite,” the company was best known as the developer behind the widely-used, industry-standard Unreal Engine. That success led the company to expand to a much broader portfolio, including the launch of Epic Games Store, a PC gaming marketplace and competitor to Steam. “Fortnite” accounted for 97% of the company’s revenue in 2018 and 88% in 2019. “Fortnite” earned Epic more than $15 billion in revenue from 2018 to 2021, according to financial disclosures made in the company’s legal battle against Apple in 2021. With the explosion of “Fortnite” in 2018, Epic became one of the most successful game studios in the world. Vogel’s email seems to signal a cash crunch at the company as it evaluates its future where the public markets are weak-eliminating a solid opportunity to go public-and late-stage venture capital has dried up.Įpic previously raised $3 billion across two funding rounds in 20, following the success of “Fortnite.” Investors in those rounds include PlayStation maker Sony and Kirkbi, the ownership group behind LEGO. But until 2017, the company had not experienced nearly as much success as when “Fortnite” became the most culturally-relevant video game in the world. Vogel did not mention layoffs explicitly in the email, but there is a growing concern at the company after that email went out Thursday morning, according to several sources employed at Epic.Įpic has an almost perfect track record of avoiding overgrowth and having to course correct with layoffs. He called for additional ideas from leadership at the company. In his email, Vogel also mentioned the company is looking at ways to “save money” - be it outsourcing, reducing hosting costs, lower spend on user acquisition, reducing its office spend or using automation to streamline customer service. “We have ambitious plans to invest through the downturn and these cost control measures reinforce our plans. “We’re not laying anyone off,” Epic’s director of corporate communications Elka Looks told The Jacob Wolf Report on Friday. All other jobs listed on Epic Games’ recruiting websites will be eliminated. It is in the process of completing a final hiring phase of about 100 jobs prior to the freeze, roughly 35 in the LEGO project, 24 for currently offered roles, 10 more roles that Vogel labeled “critical” and 26 instances where it is converting an intern to a regular employee. The company is looking to stay as-is and not increase its headcount moving forward. It is also moving to “net-zero hiring.” That means the company will not automatically backfill roles as employees leave, but will go through an intensive review of whether there’s a critical need in those positions. According to the email, sent by Epic Games COO Daniel Vogel, the company will move some staff and teams over to one of five projects: the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, its metaverse collaboration with LEGO, Fortnite Chapter 5, Harmonix Festival and Rocket League Racing. The company is scaling back its efforts across many projects and shifting its priorities to “must-succeed initiatives” for 2023. “Fortnite” developer Epic Games is freezing hiring, reassigning employees and exploring other ways to lower its operating costs in one of the first cost-saving initiatives in the company’s modern history, according to an email sent to staff by senior leadership on Thursday and obtained by The Jacob Wolf Report. The North Carolina-based game developer, Epic Games, has rarely had to institute cost-cutting measures before Thursday’s news (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
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