Cary’s Epic Games to lay off 1,000, as NC game developer cites Fortnite fall
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Epic Games to cut 1,000 jobs citing Fortnite engagement decline since 2025.
- Company notified staff March 24; second major layoff after 2023 reductions.
- CEO Tim Sweeney says cuts aimed at funding operations; AI not a factor.
Cary video game developer Epic Games announced Tuesday it will lay off 1,000 workers, including more than 200 in the Triangle, 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, with 170 in the Triangle. Its latest staff reduction will eliminate 211 positions at its North Carolina headquarters, Epic notified state commerce officials in a WARN letter Tuesday. Businesses must file WARN notices to North Carolina officials at least 60 days before conducting certain mass layoffs.
Epic Games informed workers of the job cuts in a March 24 letter from CEO Tim Sweeney. By Tuesday afternoon, multiple Triangle-based Epic employees had posted on LinkedIn that they had lost their jobs. Impacted roles included artists, engineers, managers, analysts and designers. At 37 layoffs, the most affected position in Cary by far was “senior tester.”
“I’m sorry we’re here again,” Sweeney wrote. “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. It has been considered among the industry’s “forever games” for its sustained popularity, but this week’s layoffs suggest the concept may be outdated, says Joost van Dreunen, a professor at New York University and author of the 2020 book “One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games.”
“Perhaps it’s time to admit that the notion of forever games provides a false sense of security, because they clearly do have a life cycle,” he said. “They clearly do have a moment where they start to decline.”
In his letter Tuesday, Sweeney 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.
He said workers who lost their jobs will get “at least four months of base pay” and that the company will hold a meeting Thursday to discuss its future direction.
Epic stopped sharing valuation amid metaverse push
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 propelled the mid-sized studio to become one of the world’s most valuable private companies.
In the early 2020s, Epic celebrated a series of increasing valuations, culminating in a 2022 investment from Sony and the parent company of Lego that valued Epic at $31.5 billion. But the North Carolina game developer’s momentum has since slowed, and Epic declined to share its new valuation after Disney took a $1.5 billion equity stake in the company in early 2024. Its plan to build a new headquarters at the former Cary Towne Center mall also stalled.
Sweeney’s effort to leverage Fortnite to offer customers experiences in the metaverse, a network of immersive virtual spaces, has been expensive. The CEO noted these costs contributed to the 2023 layoffs, which hit roughly 16% of Epic staff.
The latest 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.
This story was originally published March 24, 2026 at 12:11 PM.
