Fortnite cuts 1000+, kills modes, foretells doom of GaaS 🪦
Epic Games laid off over 1,000 employees, citing financial losses tied to Fortnite's declining revenue. It's one of the largest single-studio headcount reductions in recent gaming industry history. (Forbes)
March 25, 2026 | Subscribe | Read On Web
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Top Stories
‘Fortnite’ Financial Loss Leads To Over 1,000 Layoffs At Epic - Forbes (12 min read)
Epic Games laid off over 1,000 employees, citing financial losses tied to Fortnite's declining revenue. It's one of the largest single-studio headcount reductions in recent gaming industry history. (Forbes)
Fortnite Layoffs Raise Concern For Games Industry (3 min read)
Epic Games laid off 1,000+ staff citing a Fortnite engagement downturn, despite $6B in revenue last year. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella warns: if Fortnite can't sustain itself, the outlook for other live-service games is deeply uncertain. (The Gamer)
Fortnite Removing Game Modes As Epic Desperately Seeks To Cut Costs (4 min read)
Epic is shutting down three low-engagement Fortnite modes — Rocket Racing (October 2026), Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage (both April 16) — as part of broader cost-cutting following 1,000+ layoffs. A warning sign for developers investing in Fortnite's platform ecosystem. (Kotaku)
Business & Finance
Behaviour Interactive acquired The Fun Pimps, the Texas studio behind 7 Days to Die (20M+ copies sold), as part of a strategy to build a "portfolio of horror IP." The Fun Pimps will operate independently under Behaviour's "island model." (Gamesindustry)
GameStop posts 14% fall in quarterly revenue amid digital gaming shift - Reuters (3 min read)
GameStop's Q4 revenue fell 14% year-over-year, with hardware and accessories sales dropping from $725.8M to $535.6M as physical game retail continues to lose ground to digital downloads and streaming. (Reuters)
New Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma is reportedly exploring a Game Pass bundle with Netflix and an ad-supported tier to lower costs. Both moves signal a shift in distribution strategy following last fall's price hike to $30/month for Game Pass Ultimate. (Kotaku)
Studios & People
French union STJV is demanding Nacon's executive team be removed after subsidiaries Spiders, Kylotonn, and Cyanide all filed for insolvency this week, citing years of mismanagement and deteriorating working conditions across the publisher's AA studios. (Kotaku)
Sony shutters internal studio Dark Outlaw Games (3 min read)
Sony has shut down Dark Outlaw Games, an internal PlayStation studio. The closure is the latest in a series of first-party studio cuts Sony has made over the past two years. (Game Developer)
Games & Releases
Bandai Namco is issuing an emergency patch for Tekken 8 after Season 3 triggered over 700 feedback submissions and a "Mostly Negative" Steam rating. The patch targets critical bugs and community-flagged balance issues, prioritized by Discord engagement levels. (IGN)
Daybreak Games and indie studio Game Jawn announced EverQuest Legends, a modernized take on the 1999 MMO launching on PC in July. It retains original assets but adds solo-friendly progression, multi-class systems, and a streamlined UI, with closed beta in April. (GameInformer)
Peter Molyneux's god game Masters of Albion hits Steam Early Access on April 22, with a closed beta running via Discord until March 25. 22cans is seeking feedback to refine the game ahead of launch. (PC Gamer)
AI/Tech & Tools
Valve Writer Erik Wolpaw Says Some At The Studio Have Been Experimenting With AI Tools (5 min read)
Valve writer Erik Wolpaw confirmed a small internal group is experimenting with generative AI, focusing on real-time NPC reactions rather than creative writing. He sees AI as uniquely suited to letting game characters respond dynamically to player chaos — not as a replacement for human writers. (Kotaku)
OpenAI Is Shutting Down Sora, Its A.I. Video Generator (2 min read)
OpenAI is shutting down Sora, its AI video generator, just three months after signing a three-year licensing deal with Disney. The shutdown appears tied to OpenAI streamlining operations ahead of a potential IPO; video generation will continue internally for robot training. (The New York Times)
Culture & Community
AI-Generated Copycat Rushed Out Before The Original Indie Game As ‘Revenge’ (3 min read)
An AI-generated copycat of Japanese indie game Typing Room was published on Unityroom just days after the original dev shared WIP footage, sparking outrage. The incident has indie devs reconsidering whether to share in-progress work publicly at all. (Kotaku)
Dispatch developer AdHoc says don't confuse your plot for narrative (4 min read)
AdHoc Studio, developer of Dispatch, warns that plot and narrative are not the same thing — confusing the two is a common storytelling pitfall. Understanding the distinction can help developers build more emotionally resonant games. (Game Developer)
gg! see you in game!