The news follows another announcement about a hike in the price of Fortnite V-Bucks.
Epic Games, the company behind the popular video game Fortnite, announced on Thursday that it is laying off about 830 employees, or 16% of its workforce, as it tries to improve financial stability.
The company also said it is selling its music platform Bandcamp, which it bought last year, to Songtradr, a music licensing platform. Bandcamp will continue to operate as a marketplace and music community for artists and fans.
Additionally, Epic said it is spinning off most of its SuperAwesome services, which offer kid-friendly advertising and content, into a separate company under the SuperAwesome brand.
The moves come as Epic faces slowing growth and rising costs in the competitive gaming industry, which has been hit by higher interest rates and lower consumer spending since early last year.
In a memo posted on its website, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said the company had been investing heavily in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators, but realized that layoffs were the only way to reach financial stability.
“I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic,” Sweeney wrote.
He said about two-thirds of the job cuts will be “outside of core development,” so the company’s major plans will not be interrupted.
The news follows another announcement about Fortnite V-Bucks increasing in price in the US and a few other countries on October 27. The company attributed this hike to “economic factors such as inflation and currency fluctuations.”
Fortnite is a massively popular battle royale game with an estimated 400 million registered users. Aside from this title, Epic is also known for its gaming engine, Unreal Engine, which powers several other games including Fortnite.
Source:indianexpress.com