Mario Bautista
The gaming industry isn’t in the best of places right now, with one of the biggest problems facing numerous developers and publishers is financial security. More specifically, many companies are recording massive net losses and not making back the money they’re putting into video game development. This is costing people numerous jobs, and it seems like every other week, there is news of layoffs at some level. Last year, Epic Games was one of those groups that suffered such losses, as it had to cut around 1000 people from its staff to try and recoup some of its net losses. Fast forward one year, and things have changed dramatically.
At the company’s “Unreal Fest” in Seattle, CEO Tim Sweeney announced that despite everything that happened last year, Epic Games is now officially “financially sound.” He noted:
“Last year’s Unreal Fest began with some sad news. The company had to get its finances in order, and we just had some major layoffs. We spent the last year rebuilding and also executing solidly on all fronts. I’m happy to tell you now that the company is financially sound and that Fortnite and the Epic Games Store have hit new records in concurrency and success. Fortnite hit 110 million monthly active users last holiday, an all-time peak.”
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He’s not wrong about the “rebuilding” thing, as the company did several things in an attempt to recoup much of what it lost financially. For example, with its biggest property, Fortnite, they did the “Return To OG” event to try and bring back gamers, and it not only worked, but the number of returning players was beyond expectations, and given how that game is the king of microtransactions, that helped bring in some revenue.
Then, there was the Epic Games Store, which might not seem like something that has done well, but it got over $1.25 billion in revenue last year, and that’s not nothing. Plus, there’s Unreal Engine 5, which has been building up its game catalog recently, including a massively successful game featuring Sun Wukong, which is likely to get more people to lease out the engine to make titles on it.
Either way, it’s good to hear that the company is on better footing now than it was before, as the industry doesn’t need any more layoffs. Speaking of those layoffs from before, it’ll be interesting to see if the developer is able to bring back some of whom they cut off last year, or will try and bring on new staff that now it is on solid ground.
