Epic Games has always had a well-maintained position within the games industry thanks to the popularity of the Unreal Engine. However, the company has grown a huge amount over the last six years thanks to Fortnite. This has allowed Epic to rapidly spent large amounts of cash but the expenditures are starting to pile up, leading to a large number of lay-offs.

Epic Games announced today that it is laying off around 16 percent of its workforce. As first reported by Bloomberg, Epic informed employees of the changes in an internal memo sent around today. Roughly 870 employees are believed to be impacted.

On top of the lay-offs, Epic Games is also divesting in two of its recent acquisitions. It is looking to sell off then music service Band Camp and Songtradr and the marketing company SuperAwesome will be spun off into an independent entity.

This news all arrives on the same day that Epic has also announced price increases for V-Bucks, the popular in-game currency purchased in huge quantities by Fortnite players around the world. This has led to some theories that Epic Games has overspent on its legal battles with Apple and Google in recent years. Acquisitions like Band Camp and SongTradr may have only been made to give Epic another avenue to argue against Apple and Google's strangleholds over the Android and iOS platforms.

Employees affected by the job cuts at Epic Games will get six months of severance pay and health insurance.

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KitGuru Says: Given how much Epic has spent not just on legal fees with its court cases against Apple and Google, but also in areas like the Epic Games Store in an effort to increase market share, news of lay-offs shouldn't be too surprising. The bubble had to burst eventually.

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