Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney openly admitted that the company had a “financial problem” weeks before the massive layoffs.
The shocking revelation happened during the Unreal Fest earlier this week in one of the sessions that Epic held on the first day of the annual conference. Twitter user @ImmatureGamerX recently uploaded a video of one of these sessions, which was not available in the live streams for the public to view.
In the clip, Sweeney confirmed that Epic Games was handling the financial problem 10 weeks before the big announcement.
“This wasn’t a right sizing. I think we were in the right size, and I loved our original plans,” Sweeney explained. “This was a survival move that was necessary. And what we did accomplish, the one thing is we stabilized our finances so we won’t run out of money as we build the metaverse.”
Sweeney did not share details about the change in Epic’s financial struggles, but he did confirm that the company relied heavily on Fortnite’s revenue in recent years. It is no surprise that the game is one of the most profitable properties of Epic. It garnered $9 billion in just two years and had 400 million registered users in 2021. This could have largely increased in the coming years, but it still has not helped with the finances.
Epic has spent more than it has been making recently like its legal feud with Apple, and getting fined for unwanted in-game purchases made between January 2017 and September 2022 in Fortnite.