The CEO is worth 7B+. 1000 employees at 100k/yr would cost him 100M - less than his net worth fluctuates on any given day and only 20% of other costs savings they have identified.

Executives care little about the stakeholders: the employees, the customers, the community. It's their company, too. They only care about investors and themselves. People who "own" pay a lower tax rate than those that "work". Let's fix that and make things great again.

Why would the CEO waste his wealth on reviving unnecessary jobs?

Why wouldn't he? Why isn't he invested in the stakeholders?

> "The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making"

He is - the stakeholders are his shareholders, who don't want him to run a loss, and to whom he is responsible.

In 1 phrase, the source of most evils in modern society.

A minority of people (shareholders) holding the majority of people (employees) at gunpoint.

They are working for money, not coerced with a gun pointing at them. They are free to leave as they please and often do.

The vast majority of people have to work in order to leave and for the same majority leaving employment is not easy and frequently not an option because they risk being unemployed for long periods of time. Or when they do leave the new place is even worse.

*in order to live

This statement is divorced from the reality of the situation and, frankly, sounds like it comes from a position of privilege. Most job markets are not like the software developer job market where we can just leave and expect to find gainful employment with better pay and better opportunities within a couple of weeks.

Why keep the goose that lays the golden eggs alive when you can kill it and get all the golden eggs today?

Isn't he responsible for this downturn?

No.

Is that not an admission that his poor management and lack of vision cannot foresee any way to make profitable use of those people's labor?

A company raking in 5-6 billion per year can't find any profitable bets to make? Possibilities to invest in? All they can do is cut?

LOL. If you're that bad at capitalism then please resign and let someone else give it a try.

Reminds me of PG&E. So bad at being a for-profit electric company they need constant state handouts to guarantee profits. They made bad contracts so they need a PCIA fee for not selling me electricity. Hedging? Severing contracts? Arbitrage? Forecasting? Never heard of those, now make with the free coin! My son... if you are that bad at capitalism shut it down!

I agree with Warren Buffet's take here. A company that cuts or can only pump dividends is basically saying "we can't figure out how to make productive use of people and/or cash". What an unbelievable joke.

This is 25% of their workforce; this isn't some sort of greed thing it's a serious cut to the companies operational ability due to the downturn of their product line.

Maybe he could destroy his wealth to keep the employees around a bit longer but it's better for everyone if they move on and the company has a legitimate opportunity to survive. Besides people don't want to be on corporate welfare anyways, they'd rather be part of a company where they can add meaningful value.

> downturn of their product line

a product line that is still expected to make $6B this year plus a bunch of other massive IPs. Come on, if he can't keep the team together with that budget then he should step aside and let someone in charge who can.

If Fortnite were the only product with revenue, they would have $1.5 million in revenue per employee before layoffs

>Besides people don't want to be on corporate welfare anyways, they'd rather be part of a company where they can add meaningful value.

Funny. Those companies don't seem to be hiring. Everyone is doing layoffs. Maybe you said that wrong? People running companies don't feel obligated to employ, therefore everyone is now Someone Else's Problem.

As far as I can tell job postings in software are up this year. Executives love expanding, it's the most exciting part of the job. While there are many sectors inside software which may be doing better/worse, I can say my company is hiring, and I have no trouble getting interviews elsewhere if I want them.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

The difference is pay.

Although there is a slight (almost negligible) uptick in job postings, the salaries for those jobs is rapidly declining.

I'm not sure if that's true? There are a few companies in every industry who pay well above average, and then most jobs pay a more normal salary (110-150 would be my estimate). Maybe you're just not looking at the top companies anymore? Even if it was dropping through I don't see how that's relevant

I think you should reconsider the cost there. $100k/yr is likely well under the average for the people they're letting go. In addition, pretax salary represents only a portion, say 2/3 or so very roughly of what it costs a company to have an employee. Benefits packages and payroll taxes can cost a huge amount too.

With the downturn in Fortnite (and with it the dream of Fortnite as a platform), and apparent failure of Meta Horizon (at least on the Quest) . . . does that mean the entire concept of a 3D metaverse type UI is dead for another generation?

Roblox

Roblox is a product for the Toys R Us crowd. You don't project from products that work for them on to what sells to teens and adults.

Technically, you need to include the adult predators as recurring revenue too.

why is this such a talking point about roblox? couldnt this be said about literally any online platform ever?

Because Roblox has had many high profile issues with it and their response is much more tepid than other platforms.

The response from other platforms is placating regulators by verifying IDs. Is that what we want?

Roblox now does the same

Considering that they aren't properly separating the two groups, I don't see this "response" as anything but a weak excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.

No it’s definitely about regulators

Because it's a big problem that they are generally not interested in truly solving

https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/

To quote just a section of the report:

Core to the problem is that Roblox’s social media features allow pedophiles to efficiently target hundreds of children, with no up-front screening to prevent them from joining the platform.

For example, in 2018, prior to Roblox going public, a 29-year-old was caught by police with 175 hours of video footage of him grooming and engaging in explicit behavior with 150 minors using online platforms, namely Roblox.

Media and non-profit exposés from 2020 to July 2024 revealed digital strip clubs, red light districts, sex parties and child predators lurking on Roblox. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation in 2024 labeled Roblox “a tool for sexual predators, a threat for childrens’ safety”.

Numerous criminal indictments from 2019-2024 allege that sexual predators groomed children in-game, ranging from 8-14 years old, then kidnapped, raped or traded sexual content with them.

Following years of scandals, we performed our own checks to see if the platform had cleaned up its act. As a test, we attempted to set up an account under the name ‘Jeffrey Epstein’…only to see the name was taken, along with 900+ variations.

Many were Jeffrey Epstein fan accounts, including “JeffEpsteinSupporter” which had earned multiple badges for spending time in kid’s games. Other Jeff Epstein accounts had the usernames “@igruum_minors” [I groom minors], and “@RavpeTinyK1dsJE” [rape tiny kids].

We attempted to set up a Roblox account under the name of another notorious pedophile to see if Roblox had any up-front pedophile screening: Earl Brian Bradley was indicted on 471 charges of molesting, raping and exploiting 103 children. The username was taken, along with multiple variants like earlbrianbradley69.

After we found a username, we listed our age as “under 13” to see if children are being exposed to adult content. By merely plugging ‘adult’ into the Roblox search bar, we found a group called “Adult Studios” with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors. We tracked some of the members of “Adult Studios” and easily found 38 Roblox groups – one with 103,000 members – openly soliciting sexual favors and trading child pornography.

The chatrooms trading in child pornography had no age restrictions. Roblox reports that 21% of its users are under the age of 9, a number that is likely underestimated given that Roblox has no age verification aside from users seeking 17+ experiences.

Registered as a child, we were also able to access games like “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party”. We found over 600 “Diddy” games, including “Survive Diddy” and “Run From Diddy Simulator”.

Since September 2nd, 2024, third-party monitor ‘Moderation For Dummies’ has reported ~12,400 erotic roleplay accounts on Roblox. These include everything from “rape/forceful sex fetishes” to underage users “willing to do anything for Robux”.

Users seeking sexual experiences on Roblox are so pervasive that there are thousands of Roblox sex videos on porn sites, inviting users of unknown ages to make explicit content on the platform.

We tested out Roblox’s experiences to see what else kids were being exposed to. We quickly encountered images of male genitalia and hate speech in Roblox’s “school simulator” game, which had registered 28.9 million visits with no age restrictions.

I say we ban children from the internet

VRChat seems like it's doing perfectly fine. It's more like this concept is more niche than anyone seems willing to admit.

Roblox is the elephant in the room here which fills the niche for freemium, fun 3D experiences that run on basically any platform or device.

Roblox is indeed eating the world

Can confirm. There are even growing numbers of high-quality games/projects on the platform (I explored it recently), including a fully interactive+realistic nuclear reactor and 1:1 DCS-like Airbus A320 simulator.

I suspect the popularity and ease of distribution/development on the platform makes it very attractive for developers with a dream.

Many of the games that actual kids spend time on are the purest expression of gaming slop (half-broken microtransaction gambling hell with schizophrenic flashing colors). Roblox and Fortnite's Islands system are both guilty of this. The problem is kids don't know any better and don't yet understand the value of money. The obvious response is "parents should handle this" and while I agree, there is no system to let them say "here are Robux/V-Bucks you can spend on quality content (e.g., Fortnite's Battle Pass is very well designed, quality content), but gambling slop is disabled".

Roblox accounts for about 50% of total video game play time, it’s insane how big Roblox is.

But not just Roblox. People are spending their time and money elsewhere too. Polymarket and sports betting for one.

1000 layoffs represents around 25% of Epic's total workforce.

Ouch, that is huge. I assumed this was more like 10%

As far as layoff packages go, this is pretty good. 6 months health insurance and at least 4 months pay. The last 2 layoffs I experienced were just 1 week pay for every year you worked there and zero extended health benefits. And they made sure to note that they didn’t have to pay out anything at all, legally.

The wording of the announcement is better than the usual corporate non-speak too.

> they didn’t have to pay out anything at all, legally.

And still the overwhelming sentiment on HN is that unions are worthless.. When my company had layoffs the laws (thanks to the unions) made it favorable to us without needing the goodwill of the company. Additionally, representatives from the union were involved in all steps and made sure everything went as it should.

Were unions involved in Epic's layoff?

I think they're arguing that it should not be up to the companies being nice. Yeah, Epic's layoffs were nice, but a lot of companies give shit or no severance at all.

I've been laid off and I only get paid until the end of the week, and for healthcare the only thing I have access to is overpriced COBRA.

Is COBRA your only option? Have you checked your state's insurance marketplace?

Well I have a job now so it's not as big of a deal. This was awhile ago.

I live in NYC, and when I was laid off from a job in 2023. I looked into the COBRA options, and they wanted something like $3500/month, which is a lot of money. I called around around and I was eventually able to do a program through NYC where we got insurance for free. It actually worked great; we were able to get insurance within a week. NYC ain't perfect but every now and then they come through.

If I get laid off or fired, I will likely check this option again.

There is a legally required 60 day notice period, and plenty of states have their own requirements on top. New Jersey for example explicitly requires 1 week of severance for every year worked. Yes tech companies are often more generous, but doing a mass layoff with no notice and no severance was never an option to begin with.

I’ve wondered how much money was burned on Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store. I know a lot of people who would religiously download the “free games” but never spent a cent.

In fairness, someone has to try. We can't rely on GabeN being (relatively) benign without serious competition.

Everyone has tried already. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Epic...

Always thought the hate against EA Origin was unwarranted. They 24 hour no questions ask refund policy back in ~2010 that took steam like 5 years to implement themselves.

Outside of being forced to use a game launcher to launch their games, what was the real crime? Not enabling gambling on their platform like steam?

The main problem with EA Origin was EA itself. They have burnt every single bit of costumer trust EA as a company could have.

Yes but EA Origin was still very consumer friendly at that time. They were one of the only people offering digital refunds at the time. Being able to refund a game on origin then buying a different one on steam was definitely a peak in consumer gaming (that plus the humble bundle being good added to the feeling).

I agree with you about the consumer friendlyness at the time and honestly it was not bad at first, but the problems they had were way more technical with difficulties in buying and downloading and hell even just friending someone and jumping in. When it first came out I thought it was decent and improving but then it just....stopped. They could have competed with Valve but it really felt like they stopped caring one day

No matter how consumer friendly they were, nobody trusted them in the long term. Buying games on EA Origin meant giving them control over games' sales, and a EA monopoly in digital distribution was a nightmare scenario. Their bad PR at the time simply killed the platform, no matter how good or bad the product itself was at the time.

I bought Battlefield 2 and it's DLC and one of the earlier Dirt games on EA Origin and it was an absolute nightmare. My games and the DLC would constantly not be authed in my account and I still have like dozens of support threads in my old mailbox trying to get things working.

At the same time Steam had polished a lot of the rough edges like this for their catalog and other publishers so there's really no excuse. I've never had to open support tickets with any other storefront because the DLC map pack for a game would stop loading while the base game kept working.

> Outside of being forced to use a game launcher to launch their games, what was the real crime?

To me, this was the crime. Me and my friends played mass effect 3 multiplayer around launch, which was an EA Origin exclusive. It was a total pain! All of us needed to download and install the launcher, then buy & download the game through it. Then add each other as "EA origin friends". The whole process was riddled with bugs at the time - including payment problems and download problems. Origin would crash sometimes. Sometimes we couldn't see each other in multiplayer, and needed to restart origin to fix it. Sometimes another of our friends would join us - and it was always "oh god, what do I have to do to make this work??".

I really love mass effect 3. But the experience was traumatic enough that I never bought or played anything through EA Origin ever since then. The quality of Steam is table stakes now. And there's so many good games coming out that game exclusivity usually isn't enough to get you over that initial hump.

The biggest gripe I have with the origin launcher (and to a lesser extent, the epic launcher) other than "why does it exist at all?" is how laggy all UI actions are. Game developers can render a 3d world at 120+fps. Why on earth does it take multiple seconds for the UI to respond to a button press sometimes? Its completely inexcusable. The blizzard launcher is (IMO) the best launcher by this metric. You can tell competent people made it, because everything responds instantly. (The EA launcher might be good now, I wouldn't know. I mostly only play games that release on steam.)

I was at EA during peak Origin mania and the defining regret of my career is not having slapped sense into the appropriate people when I had the opportunity to do so.

We really did have a far better shot at it than even most insiders appreciated (to the point rival companies would tell me to my face how confused they were by the apparent failure to execute), however, the core team were more interested in fighting over who would take credit for it when it succeeded than ever ensuring that it would.

Everyone that needs to respond to shareholders has tried already, and failed against a privately-owned company.

Gabe Newell is a billionaire and has shown no particular need to enshittify his brand just to extract more profit. May he blessed with health and a long life.

Most of those didn't try to create an open store. They only tried to create a store and launcher for their own products.

I think the following is the bare minimum to compete with Steam at this point: 1. Store with discoverability, 2. A functional cart feature at launch 3. A wishlist with notifications for discount 4. Relatively high download speeds (500Mbps at least) 5. Friends list and activity feed 6. Achievements 7. An equivalent to steam input API 8. Regional pricing with robust payment options 9. Development/Beta build distribution as easy as steam. 10. A useful in-game overlay with at least performance metrics. optionally a web browser and notes.

All of the competition has missed either one or more of the features, making them feel like only a cash grab trying to avoid Valve's cut for providing these features.

Missing a few things there: Reviews and working on linux, for example.

Reviews for sure but I think you could drop linux and just add it whenever everything is stable, I don't think Linux is that big of a gaming population( though growing, thanks deck! )

I guess everyone gets different value from different features but I for one would not even notice if Steam removed the overlay, achievements, activity feed, input API or beta distribution. It all seems like bloat to me.

Those features are important but I think the key things are the actual games and friends. You cannot start with empty catalog and you also cannot start with older games people already own on Steam. You also need friends to be there on day 1 for multiplayer.

If Epic wasn’t actively hostile toward Linux (to the point of calling Linux cancer) I could be persuaded, but as it is now Steam is basically the only company actually trying to make gaming on Linux a thing. And because of that Steam will always get my money.

The Epic Games store/browser is awful. I have bought one (insanely discounted) game on it and get all the free games, because i like to collect videogames. But i almost never play them, because the application is super slow. Steam has absolutely the best application, then (with a huge enormous gap) comes Gog, Amazon, Xbox, EA, Ubisoft and Epic at the rock bottom. I don't use Blizzards program, so i can't judge on that one.

> i like to collect videogames

Starting thinking of it as collection licenses to maybe install games, assuming the license is still valid when you finally get around to playing it. And your account is still valid. And the servers are still running. And your operating system will still run it. etc.

Maybe just get off the train. Your numbers add to the awful business model these games are built on.

What do you think these game companies should do instead? The license lets you make your own copies on your own devices while preventing stealing by people who might make a copy and then resell, which would absolutely happen if allowed.

The majority of games on Gog offer fully offline installers, where the copy you download is enough to run forever (assuming Windows and hardware compatibility, of coruse).

Which is GOG's selling point, versus Steam.

Everything is DRM free and they provide offline installers. They are also proactive in making sure the games they sell run on modern systems.

You are absolutely right that they are just licenses and there always be a risk i cannot download or play the games anymore because of some decision. In that perspective Gog is absolutely the best. No doubt about that.

But so far, Steam has been really good to/for me.

Just a note, on Linux at least, if you use the Heroic Launcher, you can get your games from the Epic store without using their awful launcher. You can just run the games through Heroic, which I find less irritating.

This reminds me that one of the first blog posts I ever wrote was about how incredibly bad/shitty Epic games is

epic games doesn't know how to implement oauth (rant) : https://smileplease.mataroa.blog/blog/epic-games-doesnt-know...

> then (with a huge enormous gap) comes Gog

My favourite thing about GOG is that it uniquely does not demand that you install their software, instead letting you download installers straight from the website.

They're not fake netinstallers either, which doubles as a guarantee that I keep all of my games even if GOG goes bankrupt/bans my account/wipes my library/etc.

I was going to say that too. The other day I got annoyed by GoG's app constantly harassing me about updates that I just uninstalled it.

All my games are still installed and still work.

That's true. There is indeed absolutely no need to use Gog Galaxy.

> I don't use Blizzards program, so i can't judge on that one.

It’s… fine. Unnecessary, if you ask me, but ok. OTOH, it is on a completely different scale compared to Steam and GOG. I am sure it would be a disaster otherwise, it really is not designed for that.

> But i almost never play them, because the application is super slow.

And people say C++ is dead and everything must be done in Electron because developers are expensive and computers are cheap.

This here, is the reason performance matters and fast development time is not always the answer if the competition is strong and their product is high quality.

(Rust and friends are also good solutions.)

Hear, hear!

It's a noble quest. And realistic; it's almost beyond reason how bad EGS is/was for so long with so much money and "the best people" thrown at it for a decade+.

Anway, it's not quixotic IMHO.

I've been involved enough with a few (mobile and PC) efforts in this direction, and now believe the US business culture can't create new ones in established markets.

The reason is the highly successful competitor, in that case Steam, inspires a sort of megalomania in those aiming to compete with them, which leads to spectacular self destruction and consumer confusion as stores try to act big long before they are self sustaining.

Also really makes me question your average USA based developer. Making a program and storefront to manage few dozen to few hundred applications can not be that complicated problem. I am not here even talking about scale of Steam libraries that outlier customers have.

There must be some fundamental problem with either developers or management system or both...

my completely uninformed speculation is that they didn't want to just build a clean, simple store that got out of your way, they wanted to throw in some sort of rent extraction or user control at every step.

Right, to apparently every MBA wielding PM they are actually primarily user ID systems which allow you to buy things (including whole games).

And doing this requires including a near complete web browser with piles of added hooks, obviously.

It's the same issue as games. No one ever says "I bought this game becsuse of its clean UI". Not unless you're a dev doing market studies. But at the same time, a bad UI in many genres can sink a game. So UIs tend to be as minimal as necessary to ship. Even Steam had the same UI for some 15+ years beffoe finally giving it different library views

The minimal here was to take the Unreal Launcher (which was always meh. But devs rarely interact with the launcher) and shove the tab into there. Any problems with that launcher were passed to the EGS, and amplified by being B2C.

If I have to be honest, it's also tribalism. Exclusives are not a new concept even on PC. But the reaction to some EGS exclusives was so extreme. The PR hit didn't do many favors.

> Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store

Building a marketplace or AppStore isn't quixotic - it helps build distribution and gives Epic the power needed to drive studios to the Unreal Engine, though this strategy clearly went to the backburner due to Fortnite and it's entire ecosystem becoming the golden goose.

That said, Epic is also significantly more overstaffed than it's peers.

> religiously download the “free games” but never spent a cent.

We are Legion.

My main issue with Epic' Store is that it doesn't have a rating/review system just like Steam has.

Since game journos are completely woke and unreliable using Steam's game ratings from REAL players is a God-send.

Without it you simply wouldn't know if a game is any good or not.

I can't even play the decent free games I got because I can't find them in the UI. It doesn't have sort by rating (or any other popularity metric) so you have to wade through the junk. Imagine paying for that experience...

I wouldn't say it was quixotic. Think about it this way: If fortnite made at it's peak $5.5b, and 2/3rd of that was PC (I have no idea of the ratio, just guessing), Epic would have been paying $1b to Valve in just that one year (3.66* 0.30).

You could spend a lot on developing a store to avoid paying $1b in fees!

Plus, your chance to launch a store is when you have a big product. Valve launched Steam with Half Life 2. It didn't really work that well at first but everyone wanted to play HL2.

> Today we’re laying off over 1000 Epic employees. I'm sorry we're here again. 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.

Layoffs really, really suck, but at least there's not a whiff of the "we're doubling down on AI to boost productivity" cop out that we're seeing across the industry.

It's sad that a company being honest about a difficult decision is praiseworthy these days, but here we are.

> Layoffs really, really suck, but at least there's not a whiff of the "we're doubling down on AI to boost productivity" cop out that we're seeing across the industry.

I agree, though it might also be worth pointing out that for a game company there's some risk in that messaging that doesn't exist for a normal SaaS company. Investors might like to hear it (whether it is the truth or not), but the game-playing audience tends to be only slightly less anti-generative-AI than say the art community.

> it might also be worth pointing out that for a game company there's some risk in that messaging

This.

I hate that Tim got lucky two times with initiatives of employees that went against his will. I hope epic falters.

More info on this? What are you referring to?

My guess is one of them is Fortnite.

Rumor is Fortnite was stuck in development hell for a decade and was used as a punishment assignment for under-performing devs.

The Fortnite team added battle royal mode on a whim after a mediocre initial release and it has churned out five billion a year in revenue every year since.

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47503810, which is currently on the frontpage.