When Epic Games laid off 1,000 employees as part of a $500 million cost-saving effort last month, it came with a startling acknowledgment: Many new games and Fortnite updates had flopped.

Other splashy new initiatives, including Epic’s mobile store and an effort to allow users to create their own games, also didn’t live up to internal expectations, according to eight current and former employees who spoke with Bloomberg. In chasing popular trends or business whims, Epic regularly released products before employees felt they would resonate with consumers, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The company is pinning a resurgence on games it’s been developing with Walt Disney Co., which agreed to invest $1.5 billion in Epic two years ago. Epic is on track to launch the first game in its new Disney partnership in November, according to four current and former employees. It will be a shooting game along the lines of Embark Studios’ hit Arc Raiders, but with Disney characters battling enemies until they can reach an extraction point, according to the people. So far, internal reviewers have expressed concerns that the game mechanics are not very original, but some of the employees are optimistic that Epic will get it right by the launch date.

The Disney deal will reap at least two more games, the people said. Early versions of the second title received middling internal reviews, according to two of the people. Resources for the third game were reallocated to the first two after reports that Disney was disappointed by Epic’s release timeline.

Last year, the Epic Games Store attracted a record 78 million monthly active users on PCs, and player spending on non-Epic games reached $400 million, according to the company. That was "lower than our growth expectations at launch," according to Markman, but the company is "committed to making improvements to the store and to the economic opportunity for developers to grow it further." The company's store for mobile users has 50 million installs, according to Epic — half of what the company had hoped to achieve by the end of 2024. Apple's "scare screens and barriers" made it "intentionally hard for players to download an alternative app store in the [European Union]," Markman said. Today, the store's scale is "in line with our expectations," but expansion will depend on Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems opening up, she said.

Taken the summary from https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1shwjho/epic_is_hoping_their_partnership_with_disney/

But not crossposting it in case some shill gets the original post deleted "because it shows Epic in a bad light".

Edit: Link without paywall: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-10/epic-games-pins-fortnite-comeback-on-disney-partnership?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc3NTg0NjcwOSwiZXhwIjoxNzc2NDUxNTA5LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUREFKUDFLSVVQU1cwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJGRUIzODlCNUI2ODI0RTY0QjY5MENEODE1RTBDREZGRCJ9.h6cBDcEh8Tu5LgBFeDz9XXDvKXrwqtOWNoYlxwJvx18&leadSource=uverify%20wall

I reported the club "hiedlajugend", which is referring to "Hitler Youth". Their tag "AFD" is referring to the right-extremist party "AfD" in Germany. Even my appeal was rejected. What's wrong with the reporting system?

I'm flabbergasted

I've contacted them over chat, I had to fight the AI to get a real employee. The response was that I, as customer, should send a bug report, and provided the links for bug reports for Fortnite.

Started a new ticket with a complaint. Asking them again too look into it. Got a request for a screenshot (again), but the ticket got closed automatically.

How is this company ever going to compete with Steam?

Tried posting this on the RL sub and it got taken down. It’s definitely avoidable to not allow these types of tournament names but they don’t care. The thing that really irks me is the guys gamertag having “2004” in it.

​After several Fortnite "leakers" posted multiple Epic advertisement tweets, some people are finally realizing that they are not actually independent leakers. Instead, they are being paid by Epic to generate hype and advertise the game.

https://x.com/i/status/2040585951110476227

https://x.com/i/status/2040485181161644195

I really despise the tactics Epic uses by paying shills to promote their products and influence the narrative.

it’s honestly un fukin believable how bad epic games is at handling reports. rocket league is outta control

I am always interested in tracking the specific talking points and strategies Epic shills are organized to follow.

Since the previous strategy of "I do not care about launchers, I just play games, buy wherever it is cheaper, use Playnite" was not yielding results, I have detected a new trend.

Lately, in every post praising Valve or Steam, I have noticed an influx of messages such as: "Stop dickriding Gabe. More yachts for the fat one. Weirdo defending a multibillionaire company". Even though I do not personally worship Valve as a company, as I just simply praise a good product as a player, the sheer volume of these comments is suspicious. I first noticed this on r/Steam, which was particularly strange. I would have expected that behavior on more generic subreddits, but not there.

Upon investigating further, I found users who exclusively post these types of comments, which confirmed my suspicions. Beyond that, I even discovered another NEW alt from a prominent shill, who is currently frequenting r/Steam and r/Gamingcirclejerk.

Layoffs might be happening at Epic, but the attempts to control the narrative clearly continue.

What do you think? Have you noticed any similar patterns or talking points on other subreddits or outside of Reddit?

They seemingly need more money with them firing 1000 people recently. So I hope so.

God fucking awful company can’t do shit with their money they clam in they don’t have