There are two pieces of bad news coming out of Epic Games this week: the company is laying off hundreds of employees and making it more expensive to purchase Fortnite V-Bucks.
Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney sent an email to employees earlier today explaining that around 870 people would be losing their jobs. The reason? The company has been spending way more cash than it actually earns, and reducing costs, cutting operating spend, and pausing hiring completely wasn't enough. Sweeney says even with those measures "we still ended up far short of financial sustainability," so job cuts are necessary.
Any Epic employee losing their job will be offered six months base pay, six months of Epic-paid healthcare, and accelerated stock option vesting. And as part of the downsizing, Epic has also sold music marketplace Bandcamp to Songtradr and the SuperAwesome ad business is becoming an independent company, which accounts for a further 250 people leaving.
(Credit: Epic Games)Alongside those lay offs, Epic decided it's time to increase the price of V-Bucks in a wide range of countries including the US. The table above shows the new pricing and affected regions. For reference, the current price of V-Bucks in the US is $7.00 for 1,000, $19.99 for 2,800, $31.99 for 5,000, and $79.99 for 13,500.
The reason for the price increase has been explained as a reaction to "economic factors such as inflation and currency fluctuations." Similar price changes have already been carried out for the UK, Canada, and Mexico.
Epic's main rival in the game engine space, Unity, created the perfect distraction for Epic to announce this bad news. Unity angered its entire user base by announcing addiitonal ways for the company to generate revenue including per-install fees for games. The backlash was so bad, it didn't take long for Unity to backtrack on a number of those new "features."
