Epic Games, the video game company behind Fortnite and other titles, announced Tuesday that it is laying off 1,000 employees, affecting 82 employees in Bellevue.
The 82 employees, who worked at the company’s Lincoln Square office in Bellevue, will be laid off starting this Friday.
Epic Games, based in North Carolina, told employees the job cuts are not related to artificial intelligence (AI) but rather to slower growth in the video game industry, weaker spending, and tougher cost pressures.
“This isn’t our first time being here. Epic survived upheavals in 1990s with the move from 2D to 3D with Unreal 1; in the 2000s building console games with Gears of War; and in 2012 moving to online gaming with Paragon and Fortnite,” CEO and founder Tim Sweeney said in the memo obtained by The Associated Press. “Market conditions today are the most extreme we’ve seen since those early days, with massive upheaval in the industry accompanied by massive opportunity for the companies that come out as winners on the other side.”
The company’s most popular game, Fortnite, has seen a decline in engagement in recent years. The game’s 2025 player base trailed the year prior by approximately 800,000 monthly users. According to VICE, the average PlayStation user played Fortnite for 16 hours last month, down from 21 hours, while the average Xbox user played Fortnite for 15 hours, down from 19 hours.
The layoffs accounted for approximately 20% of Epic Games’ staff. Epic Games revealed it has 4,000 employees after Tuesday’s layoffs.
The video game company’s last large-scale layoffs were in 2023, when it cut 830 jobs — equivalent to 16% of Epic’s workforce at the time.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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