2y ago

Epic Games is reportedly laying off around 900 employees | Said to be roughly 16% of its workforce.

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Epic Games is reportedly laying off around 900 employees

Epic Games is reportedly laying off around 900 employees | Said to be roughly 16% of its workforce.::UPDATE 4.54pm: Epic has confirmed reports of widespread layoffs at the company, saying the move will affect "around 830…

37 comments

Can someone explain to me what Epic does that necessitates over 5000 employees?
- ~20 game studios, unreal engine (probably has 15 divisions itself across games, films, ads, etc), epic games store, artstation, sketchfab, metahuman, quixel, metaverse projects... how many employees should they have?
  
  how many employees should they have?
  No idea, that's why I asked. I wasn't aware of much of what your listed.
  Thanks for taking the time to answer tho instead of assuming I was upset that they employ people.
  
  And don’t they also own Bandcamp which I think they are selling.
- They have a game engine, they make games, they have a store front.
  Why would the amount matter?
  
  Because I'm curious?
- Goddamn, so many unhelpful answers.
  There are lots of threads online about this, and no clear firsthand answers, but as far as I could parse the Internet consensus:
  Hired too many people, that's why they're laying people off right now
  Unity engine team is the same size as unreal, but unity is constantly trying to sell ads and services to the point that their engine department is just another department of many departments that are all trying to hoover up revenue, rather than the engine being their main focus.
  Here's an example thread with a bunch of snooty assholes and a couple reasonable answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16owfy1/7700_employees_at_unity_can_someone_who_works/
- Unity has 7700 employees, and they only create a game engine.
  
  I have a hard time wrapping my brain around it taking 7700 people to create a game engine. But I'm not in that industry and have no idea what's involved.
  
  Not just a game engine, Unity is a software company with numerous services. Mainly game related though. There’s the Unity ads platform which probably employs hundreds in Finland alone. Unity is used from entertainment to manufacturing industry.
  
  Isn't that 2022 numbers? They've fired a lot of people lately, not sure the number they're at now
- Fortnite alone had >2k people working on it at once when it was at its peak. Add in a bunch of extra departments and that makes a little more sense
  
  🤯 Tho I suppose the customer facing side of the house would be so be sizeable for something as big as Fortnite.
- If they see value in it I don’t see why employing more people is exactly a bad thing
  
  Didn't say it was.
Poor Bandcamp :(
- I'm surprised it survived the Epic acquisition without enshittification.
  I really hope it can continue to do so now it's starting to be passed around. It seems to be a good place for employees, artists and users alike.
  Without it, there's just the 15c a year from Spotify.
I wonder if any of them will be able to burn Atium...
- OK, I'm intrigued. What does Epic laying off employees have to do with Mistborn?
  
  Ooo, I get it. Because they're in the 16% that were affected!
Wonder how much of this is due to automation.
- Isn’t automating stuff kind of one of the big main points of a technology company?

37 comments