Is Epic Games in a Crisis? Will Fortnite shutdown soon? In my opinion the answer to the first question is “Yes” and the answer to the second question is “No”, at least not any time soon and not even for a long time, if Epic starts to acknowledge their mistakes, which, on the other hand, seems somewhat doubtful.
In 2023 Epic fired over 800 employees to save costs and now in 2026 they have let go of another 1000 Fortnite developers. Additionally, they have increased the prices for their Vbucks and announced the shutdown of a couple of Fortnite Gamemodes.
To understand the significance of this, it is important to highlight that Fortnite is currently the only thing that keeps Epic Games alive. Epic has made it their mission to rival Steam, which so far is a fruitless effort. I understand the desire to want to become a big player, but you can’t force it. The Epic Game Store is the second-biggest launcher for PC Games. There is no doubt about this, but the question remains: At what cost?
Epic offers an apparently attractive deal for developers by taking a smaller commission for publishing games. Steam or the Playstation Store, for example, usually take around 30% commission of games published on their platform, while Epic only takes around 12%.
The problem, however, is that the Epic Game Store is not popular among players. On the contrary, the Epic Games Store probably has the most negative reception among all Launchers. A lot of that is Epic’s fault, like the shady spying on their own players scheme or their questionable business ethics, for which they already got sued and lost. I would therefore argue that most developers would rather allow Steam and Playstation to take bigger cuts on platforms, they can actually sell a lot of copies on. A smaller part of a large cake is better than a large part of a tiny pie.
And let’s also not forget that while Epic might take a smaller commission, they are the safe haven of Microtransactions and NFT games. All the NFT Games, which are not allowed on most other platforms and stores, are more than welcome in the Epic Games Store, which is openly pursuing them.
Whenever Epic gets involved in a game, they also get spiked up with Microtransactions. You just have to remember how tame Fall Guys and Rocket League, for example, were, before Epic got their greedy hands on them. It’s a difference like day and night. Just ask some of their players.
Epic tried and still tries to force themself on the map by regularly paying for time-limited exclusivity of games for a year or two before they will also launch on Steam or, in some cases, even permanent exclusivity for some smaller studios. Epic invests a lot in this and it is simply not paying off. Whether the negative perception is deserved or not, but they can’t seem to shake it off and they spend way more money on those deals than they seem to get out of it. Most players just either wait it out or buy the games on console instead.
Epic is also giving away free games to its users every single week. As a consumer I find that awesome. Over the years I have collected around 400 games on Epic, many of them either AAA or very promising Indie titles and I haven’t ever spent a cent on the Epic Games Store. But you also kind of see the problem. These games are great for free-riders like me, but it doesn’t convince anybody to actually start spending money on this store now. And giving away games for free isn’t cheap for Epic. They have to spend a lot of money to do so, which simply isn’t profitable.
You can start to see how all of this combines. The Epic Game Store has never been profitable or sustainable. They make a big loss with it every year in the hope of one day magically turning everything around. It might be understandable that they tried it in the beginning of the big Fortnite Hype between 2017 and 2021, but after that point most companies would have come to the conclusion that it simply didn’t work and downsized their store to a more healthy size, similar to EA or Ubisoft (not that their stores would be role models by any means). It nearly seems like arrogance that Epic refuses to accept this reality.
But it isn’t just the Epic Game Store. Most other games from Epic are also not big money-printing machines. Rocket League and Fall Guys are probably some of their most successful assets besides Fortnite and both games have their peak times behind them and get less support by Epic nowadays. Both games still generate income, but it isn’t massive. Rumbleverse might have been a good game, but it went up in flames and their famous Unreal Tournament franchise they have for unknown reasons completely abandoned. Most other games they were involved with were big commercial failures. Fortnite is really keeping the lights on at Epic.
Result:
Epic Games is, in my opinion, a house of cards with only one solid pillar, which is Fortnite. If this pillar gets even in a small crisis, then the whole building is starting to shake. This is a huge problem and it’s baffling how Epic hasn’t been able to change this. You usually have two options. You either invest a lot and try to diversify, which is obviously what Epic tried to do. If that, however, fails, you have to downsize to a healthy level to guarantee your long-term survival. Epic hasn’t done that yet and I am not convinced they really will. They just fired a lot of people, made a few marketing statements and will probably call it a day now.
You just have to compare Epic to Sony or Valve to see how fragile the situation of Epic Games is. If Helldivers 2 or the next Horizon or Last of Us flops, it’s not great for Sony, but they don’t have to worry about the future of the company whatsoever and the same goes for Valve. If Fortnite would lose 50% of their players overnight, then the whole of Epic Games would get in a life-threatening situation. It’s like a company, where you see all the executives wearing the most expensive suits and dining in the best restaurants in town and you think they probably have a very successful business, but they can barely afford to pay their monthly interest rate.
I am far from being a business consultant, but I don’t understand why Epic isn’t stopping these unsuccessful exclusivity deals, which cost more than they gain, remove or at least reduce the amount of free games, which are just the gaming equivalent of sportswashing and equally unsuccessful. And Epic should also stop paying money for Fortnite creative maps. Since the launch of UEFN, they have spent around 900 million dollars on those maps. This should be 0, since Fortnite Creative will a) never be the next Roblox and b) doesn’t need any money to do what it’s doing right now anyway.
If Epic would do all of that (which I would call reconnecting with reality) than the company could have a bright long-term future. I, however, think their hubris will prevent them from doing so. They will continue their failed dream of becoming the biggest and most popular launcher for PC Games and the next real crisis at Fortnite will get close to knocking them over and they will need a bailout from a scammy company like the Chinese giant Tencent and nobody can really want that.
