Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says that the company will lay off over 1,000 employees and cut $500 million in costs as it faces a downturn in engagement with “Fortnite,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“I’m sorry we’re here again. The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we’re spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded,” Sweeney wrote in a memo to staff.
Of course, part of the problem has probably been the never-ending legal battle between Epic and Apple. Epic Games‘ five year legal battle against Apple has cost the developer well over $100 million in legal fees alone, and CEO Tim Sweeney says that the total cost has been north of a billion dollars, according to 9to5Mac.
While Sweeney thinks it was worth it, high-profile Apple commenter John Gruber has his doubts – suggesting the legal victory doesn’t necessarily mean Fortnite will be allowed back into the App Store, the article notes.
“If Apple were going to allow Fortnite back into the App Store they could have done so at any point in the last four years,” Gruber said. “And there’s nothing, not a word, in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’s decision last week that says Apple needs to reinstate Epic Games. I think Apple just stays the course and Fortnite remains persona non grata as far as the App Store is concerned.
Currently, Apple wants the never-ending lawsuit by Epic Games dismissed. Last October the tech giant asked the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to overturn an April 2021 injunction, according to Bloomberg.
Barring that, the tech giant wants a new judge assigned to the case OR the 2021 injunction to be dismissed entirely. From Apple’s request: The injunction breaches well-established guardrails on the civil contempt power, and its sweeping new restrictions on Apple violate several independent limits, including the Constitution itself.
[…]
This Court should reverse the district court’s contempt order and denial of Apple’s Rule 60(b)(5) motion. In the alternative, the court should vacate the new injunction and reassign this case to a different district judge for any further proceedings necessitated by this Court’s decision.
Apple argues that the Epic Games injunction redux goes far beyond the original order and attacks conduct that’s not illegal under California law. In April US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sided with Fortnite developer Epic Games over its allegation that Apple failed to comply with an order she issued in 2021 after finding the company engaged in anticompetitive conduct in violation of California law.
Apple also said it provided no assurance that its procedures designed to comply with a 2021 injunction, in a case brought by Epic Games, to let app users pay developers directly rather than have the company charge the developers hefty commissions would be foolproof, according to Reuters.
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