Epic Games Lays Off Over 1,000 Employees, Will Permanently Shut Down Three Fortnite Modes

Epic Games has announced another major round of layoffs, confirming that more than 1,000 employees are being let go as part of a broader restructuring effort. At the same time, the company has also revealed that three Fortnite modes Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage will be permanently taken offline in the coming months.

According to reporting and statements shared following the announcement, Ballistic and Festival Battle Stage are set to go offline on April 16, while Rocket Racing will remain live a little longer before shutting down in October. Epic has framed the move as part of a wider effort to stabilize the business after what it described as a prolonged downturn in Fortnite engagement that began in 2025.

That alone makes this one of the more significant shakeups Epic has seen in years and not just because of the number attached to it.

In an internal note reported by multiple outlets, CEO Tim Sweeney reportedly said the company has been “spending significantly more than we’re making,” pointing to weaker player engagement, slower industry growth, and rising operating costs as major factors behind the decision. He also reportedly emphasized that the layoffs are not related to AI, a clarification that seems almost mandatory anytime a company cuts this deep in 2026.

Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage were all part of Epic’s push to turn Fortnite into something bigger than just a battle royale—a wider platform of connected experiences that could support multiple genres and communities under one roof. On paper, that strategy made sense. In practice, it now looks like not every branch of that expansion managed to stick.

Ballistic, in particular, had positioned itself as Fortnite’s more tactical, first-person experiment, while Rocket Racing and Festival Battle Stage were clearly meant to broaden the game’s appeal beyond its traditional audience. Their closure suggests Epic is now pulling back and refocusing on what still works at scale, rather than continuing to spread resources across modes that never fully found their footing.

That’s the bigger takeaway here: this isn’t just a layoffs story, and it isn’t just a Fortnite story either. It’s another reminder that even the biggest live-service machine in gaming isn’t immune to contraction.

Fortnite remains one of the most successful games in the world, but success at that level also comes with absurd operating costs, constant content demands, and the pressure to keep reinventing itself fast enough to hold attention in a market where players are constantly moving on to the next thing. When that momentum slips, even slightly, the consequences can hit hard and apparently, they just did.

For the people losing their jobs, that’s obviously the real damage here. The mode shutdowns will get headlines, but the bigger loss is the human one. More than 1,000 people don’t just disappear from a company like Epic without it being felt across development, support, operations, and future output.