Gunning for the award of most tone-deaf company of 2023, Epic Games returned the ‘Share The Wealth’ emote to sale in Fortnite on the same day it announced more than 800 layoffs. The emote costs 200 V-Bucks (equating to around $1.50) and features the player’s avatar pulling wads of cash out of their pockets and throwing it around like confetti. With the company blaming the layoffs on a need to stabilize its cashflow amid a shift to a more creator-based economy within Fortnite, the incongruence is glaring.
And it seems as if the team at Epic Games was well aware of that. Shortly after the addition had begun to be picked up and shared by social media accounts like Fortnite News on X, the entire Daily section of the Item Shop (where the emote was housed) went offline. The company followed up on X with a post that the section was “currently missing” and would “return at the next Item Shop Refresh”:
We're aware the 'Daily' section of the Item Shop is currently missing, and will return at the next Item Shop Refresh. pic.twitter.com/6hWmIVviZ9
— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) September 29, 2023
Meanwhile, Epic Games sent an email to Kotaku about the incident, clarifying that Fortnite Item Shop rotations are scheduled in advance and admitting that the addition of the ‘Share The Wealth’ emote on the back of the layoffs was a “mistake.” They wrote, “The emote was taken down when we realized the mistake roughly one hour after going live.” Clearly, someone had an inkling of the PR headache that such a move could result in.
The layoffs shed 16% of the company’s workforce, most of which were outside of the “core development” teams. They follow a shift in focus within the development ethos of Fortnite, which now allows creators to sell their own items in the game while providing them with a 40% cut of earned revenue. They’ve also taken place as Epic Games continues to pay developers to offer their games for free via the Epic Games Store each week.
Despite that, the problems aren’t unique to Epic Games or Fortnite, as much of the games industry is in a crunch period following a boom during the Covid lockdown period. Embracer Group is aggressively downsizing, Sega recently canceled projects from its European studios, and Ubisoft and Activision also just laid off unspecified numbers of employees.
