Double standards: Epic Games increases prices on Fortnite and reduces its number of employees

Epic Games, one of the largest companies in the video game industry, is clearly experiencing some liquidity problems.

Long known for its very popular and lucrative Unreal Engine, the American studio has reached stratospheric levels thanks to its free-to-play Battle Royale Fortnite. This notably allowed it to launch the Epic Games Store, with enough resources to regularly offer a free game to its users.

But this dream would have just recently turned into a nightmare, at least for a significant part of the group’s employees, and to a certain extent for the players of Fortnite. Let us also remember that the man behind the success of this game has currently left the ship.

The massacre at Epic Games

The very knowledgeable Jason Schreier wrote an article at Bloomberg, indicating that Epic Games parted ways with 16% of its payroll, or 870 employees, during the day yesterday. It would have started in the morning with the surprise removal of access to the company’s Slack server for those affected.

Their departure from the company was later confirmed by a memo from Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, also reported by Jason Schreier. It says in particular: “ For a while, we spent way more money than we made, investing in the next evolution of Epic and the growth of Fortnite as a metaverse ecosystem. I have long been optimistic that this would happen without layoffs, but I see in retrospect that it was impossible. »

If we do not know exactly the details of this massive layoff operation, we have in any case learned that part concerns Mediatonic, the studio behind Fall Guys. Bought two years ago by Epic Games due to the enormous success of its game, it is visibly paying for the errors of its patron.

In any case, the 870 employees affected should receive severance pay for the next 6 months and will continue to benefit from the benefits of Epic’s health organization. After this time, let’s hope that most of them will have found decent employment.

For a few more V-Bucks

In parallel with these massive layoffs, Epic Games indicated that the price of V-Bucks would increase in Fortnite, starting October 27 in much of the world. This is very likely the second side of the same coin, but the timing of the announcement does not appear particularly fortunate.

Thus, obtaining the in-game currency of the studio’s flagship Battle Royale will follow the following evolution:

• Pack of 1,000 V-Bucks: 8.99 euros instead of 7.99 euros;
• Pack of 2,800 V-Bucks: 22.99 euros instead of 19.99 euros;
• Pack of 5,000 V-Bucks: 36.99 euros instead of 31.99 euros;
• Pack of 13,500 V-Bucks: 89.99 euros instead of 79.99 euros.

If this is a relatively “reasonable” price increase, we can see with these last two developments a sign of declining health for an Epic Games that we thought was imperturbable. According to Tim Sweeney’s memo mentioned above, no further layoffs are planned at this time. Let’s hope so, for the sake of the 84% of employees still in place…

Source : Bloomberg