“I know for a fact there are senior executives in Disney who want them to buy Epic, and are just waiting for that moment,” said Heath. “And then there’s others who think it’s a bad idea. So, I think if Epic ever sold, if it ever decided to call it quits on being an independent company, Disney would be the most natural home for it for a lot of reasons, for the park integration. Can you imagine a Fortnite park?”

Heath went on to discuss Epic Games’ recent legal battles against major tech industry companies like Apple and Google, and how this might also play a pivotal role in keeping Disney from buying the company outright, at least for now. In the long term, however, both companies might want to team up to a greater degree to take on the ever-popular Roblox.

“And, I can see that, but at the same time you have to understand Epic is a founder-controlled company, so Tim Sweeney has full voting stock control and can make unilateral decisions, and it’s really up to him. And he is, as we saw, he was the guy who went to battle against the app stores, against Apple and Google, to open those up. And it’s almost an illogical crusade when you’re running a company like Epic to do something like that.”

“But that kind of thinking is something that’s going to keep Disney a little bit at arm’s length.”

Belloni brings up the fact that the recent financial hardships faced by Epic Games, which led to the company laying off over 1,000 of its employees, could also play a role in Disney’s potential acquisition plans. “If this is the beginning of a long, slow decline for Fortnite, which I’m not sure it is, it’s not great if Disney’s putting all their chips into a declining business.”

“Gaming in general is having a hard time,” responded Heath. “But if you look at Roblox‘s growth, which is where Epic has been trying to take Fortnite into more of an open-world creator-first ecosystem where creators can build businesses, building on top of Fortnite, Roblox is just killing it with that. And I think these experiences are probably still the future of not only gaming, but social media for young people, right? They’re hanging out in these worlds. So Fortnite‘s not dead.”

Belloni responded by saying that his 10-year-old “would be stoked if Tony Stark showed up and Yoda and a bunch of Jedi, and they could play with those.”

“It’s the best combination to potentially actually challenge Roblox‘s dominance here,” noted Heath. “You can call it gaming, but it’s really entertainment, and it’s also social media. I mean Disney’s on the cap table. They’re supposed to be doing this integration.”

It is worth noting that, for now, neither Epic Games nor Disney have made any announcements or statements that indicate that there might be discussions about an acquisition in the works. As Heath and Belloni noted, however, it could potentially be a beneficial partnership, especially in the wake of Disney’s deal with OpenAI falling through in light of the latter bringing an end to its video generation technology Sora.

In her post, Griffin noted that Prinke is “currently fighting terminal brain cancer,” and said that, “because of the layoff, we didn’t just lose income—we lost his life insurance.” In response, Sweeney took to social media platform X to reveal that Epic Games has been communicating with the family, hoping to solve their issues with insurance.

“Epic is in contact with the family and will solve the insurance for them,” he wrote. “There is high confidentiality around medical information, and it was not a factor in this layoff decision. Sorry to everyone for not recognizing this terribly painful situation and handling it in advance.”

Shortly after this, Griffin had updated her Facebook post, noting that “WE ARE IN TALKS WITH THE APPROPRIATE PEOPLE! WILL UPDATE SOON, LIKELY BY TUESDAY. THANK YOU.”

The announcement for the lay-offs was made last week, with Sweeney blaming the “downturn in Fortnite engagement,” which led to Epic Games “spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles, puts us in a more stable place.”

Sweeney also made note of “industry-wide challenges,” “tougher cost economics,” and the gaming industry’s spending having gone down in recent years. Looking to the future, he has noted that the company plans to continue supporting Fortnite with “awesome” experiences and more seasonal content, including gameplay, story, and live events. Epic Games also plans to continue the evolution of Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN, which will eventually lead to the development of Unreal Engine 6.

“What we now need to do is clear: build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events; accelerate developer tools with greater stability and capability as we evolve from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6. And we’ll be kicking off the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year,” said Sweeney.

Sweeney has also made a note of the fact that employees affected by the lay-offs will get a severance package that includes four months’ of their salaries, with extras on top “based on tenure,” as well as six months of health care coverage. “We’ll also accelerate their stock options vesting through January 2027 and extend equity exercise options for up to two years,” he said.

In the meantime, developers still at Epic Games have spoken about needing to continue working, while also writing a sympathetic message for those affected by the lay-offs. “Our teams will have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward,” wrote gameplay producer Robby Williams on social media, “but we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond.”

Gameplay producer Robby Williams described the event as “a brutal day at Epic,” noting that “what comes next is very hard and painful” for those affected by the lay-offs. On the subject of now having to make do with a team that is now smaller by around 1,000 developers, he said that the crew will have to “pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward.

“Our teams will have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward,” wrote Williams on social media, “but we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond.”

“I’ll continue to do my best to keep making the best game for you,” he continued, “and I’m confident that my peers feel the same, but please be patient with us as we navigate this tough time and do our best in spite of these truly gut-wrenching losses.”

In announcing the lay-offs, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny said that the company was “spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles, puts us in a more stable place.”

As for the future of Fortnite, Sweeny said that the company will have to focus on offering players “awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events.” He also said that Epic Games has to work on its developer tools “with greater stability and capability as we evolve from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6. And we’ll be kicking off the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year.”

The lay-offs were far from the only things coming about at Epic Games in light of Fortnite seeing a downturn. The company is also shutting down three popular game modes available in Fortnite: Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage. The modes will be shut down in a staggered manner, with Ballistic and Festival Battle Stage being on their way out in April, and Rocket Racing remaining live until October 2026.

“We’ve built a lot of Fortnite modes, and in some cases, we failed to build something awesome enough to attract and retain a large player base,” said Epic Games when it announced these shut downs. “We are going to shut these modes down on the schedules outlined below – we’re grateful for everyone who played.”

What the future holds for Fortnite might seem murky for now. However, Epic Games likely has plans already in place. The company’s partnerships with others might also play a role, like the deal it had signed with Unity to bring in the latter’s game engine capabilities into Fortnite.

The first among them is Rocket Racing, a Mario Kart-like addition from developer Psyonix (Rocket League) that brought quite an entertaining arcade racing gameplay loop that’s sure to be missed when it goes offline in October 2026. That includes all raving islands created with UEFN, along with racing templates for new ones. There will be no more Rocket Racing Quests and Ranked Rewards starting next week, although the fact that you can still use your custom cars in other game modes is a small consolation.

While Rocket Racing’s exit is still a while away, Ballistic fans aren’t going to be so lucky as the mode is on its way out next month, leaving you with precious little time to enjoy it. While FPS island support will continue to be provided on UEFN, Epic Games asserts that the platform will need more functionality before a similar mode is possible (and there’s no timeline for the same).

Last but not least is the Festival Battle Stage, which will continue to operate normally in Harmonix’s Fortnite Festival until it shuts down on April 16, presumably to enable a more robust approach to content creation for other music modes such as Main Stage and Jam Stage. Epic Games had this to say about the removal of the three modes:

“We’ve built a lot of Fortnite modes, and in some cases, we failed to build something awesome enough to attract and retain a large player base. We are going to shut these modes down on the schedules outlined below – we’re grateful for everyone who played.”

The path forward remains murky for Fortnite, but perhaps its partnership with the Unity Engine could help turn its fortunes around. Either way, the tweet below is now the latest blow to the title, and all we can do is commiserate and share fond memories of these modes before they disappear.

https://x.com/FortniteStatus/status/2036451164347109440

Apparently, the “downturn in Fortnite engagement,” which seemingly began last year, has led to the company “spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles, puts us in a more stable place.”

Sweeney also cited other “industry-wide challenges,” including the weaker sales of current-gen consoles compared to the previous generation, “tougher cost economics,” and overall lower spending. Of course, it also doesn’t help that Fortnite has “other increasingly engaging forms of entertainment” to compete with.

Then there are all the other problems that the free-to-play title has faced, such as consistently delivering “magic with every season” and only recently returning to mobiles. “We have taken a lot of bullets in a battle, which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers.” So what’s the plan going forward?

“What we now need to do is clear: build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events; accelerate developer tools with greater stability and capability as we evolve from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6. And we’ll be kicking off the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year,” said Sweeney.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that the company has seen mass layoffs. In 2023, 830 employees, roughly 16 percent of the total workforce, were let go due to Epic “spending way more money than we earn.” It echoes the same sentiment as today, only with Fortnite having lower engagement.

Recently laid-off employees will benefit from a severance package with four months’ pay (with further amounts “based on tenure”) and six months of health care coverage in the US. “We’ll also accelerate their stock options vesting through January 2027 and extend equity exercise options for up to two years.” More details will be revealed in an upcoming meeting on March 26th.

Interestingly, Sweeney said that the layoffs were unrelated to AI. “To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can.” Of course, you can’t fault players for being skeptical, especially since AI-generated art was discovered in-game with Season 7.

Available earlier this month, the upgraded upscaler offered even higher image quality for supporting games, starting with Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem. You can expect the same for Control Ultimate Edition and Alan Wake 2, with Remedy promising “noticeable improvements in image stability and clarity of motion.”

Which is interesting because when it first implemented PSSR for Alan Wake 2, it received no shortage of criticism. Of course, Remedy worked to improve on this, adding ray-traced reflections in Quality Mode and an improved resolution in Performance Mode. It also eventually provided the option to turn off PSSR.

Upgraded PSSR must be enabled separately as well, so those who don’t like it can continue to enjoy both titles in their current PS5 Pro iterations. When these will be available is unknown, but Remedy says “soon.”

Of course, with its older titles embracing the same, it seems a given that Control Resonant will follow. It was recently confirmed to feature Path Tracing and RTX Mega Geometry on PC at launch later this year, so stay tuned for updates.

The post is a the latest iteration of the Xbox Excellence Awards, which was created last year to celebrate how players engaged with various releases on Xbox. The Store Rating category lists 2025 games with the best ratings on the Microsoft Store, with an added requirement of the title having at least 500 ratings. Player Engagements is about the average number of hours spent on a game by each player within the first six weeks of a game’s release. Daily Active Users celebrates titles, expansions or updates with the highest single-day active users throughout the year. And finally Units Sold is fairly self-explanatory.

Going down the lists, you’ll find many of the biggest releases of the year, from ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6, as well as award-winning RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Indie titles have also been well-represented, with games like Crime Scene Cleaner and Satisfactory making it into the lists. There also doesn’t seem to have been a singular genre to dominate the lists, since everything from sports games like EA Sports Madden NFL 26, to fantasy adventure life sims like Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, and even fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics are well represented.

Curiously, none of the games was present in all four of the categories. At most, we got to see titles like Borderlands 4 being able to make it on to three of them: Player Engagement, Daily Active Users and Units Sold. Even ARC Raiders, which has seen quite a bit of success, is only on the Units Sold and Daily Active Users lists.

Microsoft has also emphasized that the lists represent a diverse collection of games developed by studios of varying sizes. All in all, it represents 48 unique developers based out of 13 countries, with 24 publishers having had a hand in their release. 19 of the games were self-published. “Taken as a whole, it’s an encapsulation of development on Xbox – we want gaming to reach you wherever you are, and for the teams making those games to find you from wherever they are,” wrote the company.

Full list of games:

Store Rating:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Crime Scene Cleaner
• Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2
• Digimon Story: Time Stranger
• Dreamcore
• Dynasty Warriors: Origins
• Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Lies of P: Overture
• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
• Little Nightmares III
• Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics
• Minami Lane
• Mullet MadJack
• Poppy Playtime Chapter 4
• Satisfactory
• Silent Hill 2
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
• The First Berserker: Khazan

Player Engagement:

• Borderlands 4
• Digimon Story: Time Stranger
• Dynasty Warriors: Origins
• EA Sports College Football 26
• EA Sports FC 26
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
• Farm Together 2
• Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
• Helldivers 2
• Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
• MLB The Show 25
• Monster Hunter Wilds
• NBA 2K26
• NHL 26
• Rust
• Satisfactory
• The First Berserker: Khazan

Daily Active Users:

• Arc Raiders
• Avowed
• Battlefield 6
• Borderlands 4
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• DOOM: The Dark Ages
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Fortnite
• Forza Horizon 5
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Grounded 2
• Helldivers 2
• Marvel Rivals
• Minecraft
• NBA 2K26
• Rematch
• Roblox
• Rocket League
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

Units Sold:

• Arc Raiders
• Assassin’s Creed Shadows
• Battlefield 6
• Borderlands 4
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• EA Sports Madden NFL 26
• EA Sports College Football 26
• EA Sports FC 26
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Helldivers 2
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• MLB The Show 25
• Monster Hunter Wilds
• NBA 2K26
• PGA Tour 2K25
• Ready or Not
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• WWE 2K25

The latest in a series of older posts discussing the Epic Games Store and Steam by, among other people, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry, and Larian’s director of publishing Michael Douse, Remedy has referred to Epic as being “an excellent partner” regardless of the game being unavailable on Steam.

“There would be no Alan Wake 2 without Epic Publishing. The publishing deal with Epic was very fair to Remedy. While these complex deals can often take even a year to reach their conclusion, and may not always be fair to the developer, this one was. And it only took months to get done. Epic Games was, and is, an excellent partner to us. Steam or no Steam,” wrote the studio.

As for the longer discussion taking place, it all started when Oshry revealed that games published by New Blood Interactive have been seeing spikes in sales figures after they were given away for free on Epic Games Store. He noted that sales went up by as much as 200 percent during these events. Sweeney acknowledged this, noting that “on some transactions, Epic wins. On more, Steam wins. But one thing is constant on every transaction: gamers and developers win by having more options and better deals.”

In further posts, Sweeney went into how Epic Games Store is roughly 55-60 percent the size of Steam in terms of monthly active users, and the company focuses on reinvesting its revenue to work with more developers. Alongside this, he also threw in a dig at Valve president Gabe Newell’s yacht purchase.

“The more telling number is monthly active users, where Epic Games Store is 55%-60% the size of Steam. We heavily reinvest back into engaging users through the Free Games Program, putting our revenue back to work for developers in a way that those yachts and diamond teeth don’t,” he wrote.

Responding to this, Douse offered his own two cents, noting that despite Epic having a large hand in funding the development of Alan Wake 2, the company did little to help Remedy’s own financial issues in light of Alan Wake 2 not coming to Steam.

“I understand Epic entirely funded Alan Wake 2 but this altruistic pro-developer talk doesn’t sit well when Remedy seemingly went into financial crisis because they couldn’t tap Steam for AW2 sales suffering potentially hundreds of millions in lost revenue,” he wrote.

“Ultimately the viability of the store sits on their ability to convert hundreds of millions of Fortnite players into mid-hardcore premium gamers, and I don’t see the Fortnite brand attempting to do that,” his posts continued.

Alan Wake 2 was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2023. For more details, check out our review.

Dring believes that the daily active users metric for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been lower than the series typically gets, especially shortly after launch. While he noted that last year’s Black Ops 6 did incredibly well, this time around, fewer players are engaging with the new entry. Elliot believes the reasons for this might just be a “combination of community burnout, questionable creative and business decisions by Activision/Microsoft, and strong competition.”

“One reason for the decline is the intense competition from rival shooters, mostly Battlefield 6 and ARC Raiders,” explained Elliot. “The new Battlefield title had a massive launch, securing the biggest opening in its franchise’s history. ARC has sold almost 8 million copies so far, and the latest Fortnite Simpsons crossover was a hit. Attention is scarce.”

“Players have expressed growing dissatisfaction with CoD‘s lack of innovation, feeling that the franchise is ailing. The introduction of Fortnite-like cosmetic items like non-military character skins (Beavis and Butthead, Nicki Minaj) has alienated a significant portion of the fanbase who prefer a more grounded military aesthetic. The co-op campaign was a major point of criticism. It was uneven and tedious when played solo, while also requiring an always-online connection. It also drew controversy and ire for its use of AI slop in game.”

Speaking of competition, Dring noted that Black Ops 7’s launch happened to take place during an incredibly competitive time for the shooter genre, thanks in large part to the popularity of games like ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6.

“ARC Raiders had a lesser impact than Battlefield 6 did, but if you’re just launching a brand-new shooter on the market and it’s getting a mixed reception,” he said. “You’ve got ARC Raiders as well as Battlefield 6 out, so it didn’t really come out in the best environment.”

“Now look, even if the franchise has fallen a little bit this year, it’s still mega numbers. We’re still mostly over 20m active monthly players – most games would kill for that. But it’s dipping below what it was before due to a mix of the competitive environment it released in and it perhaps didn’t connect with people in the same way it may have done in the past.”

Elliot puts it down to the “attention economy” in general being saturated with all of the different options that players have these days, especially when it comes to live-service games. He notes that, at this stage, the market is largely dominated by the bigger live-service games that have already been out thanks to general inertia as well as “improvements to their content.”

“This fierce competition, coupled with the difficulty of convincing gamers to abandon their established habits, cosmetic investments, and friendship groups – a powerful sunk-cost fallacy – is the primary reason for the high failure rate among new live-service shooters,” he says.

Further in the interview, Elliot also spoke about the potential for a game to come in that doesn’t purely focus on “hyper-competitive player-versus player” gameplay. Rather, he noted that newer entries like Helldivers 2 focused entirely on PvE and found success, while ARC Raiders managed to meld PvE and PvP in a package that also helped foster strong community interaction.

“So yes, Black Ops 7‘s specific issues contribute to its underperformance, but in general there’s a systemic challenge: the live-service shooter market is now ruthlessly consolidated,” explained Elliot. “Finding consistent success in this segment is difficult, even for a massive, established franchise. The path to success is no longer a guaranteed annual release, but rather requires exceptional product quality, genuine innovation, or finding a neglected sub-genre or new niche, where the inertia of the ‘incumbents’ does not yet hold absolute sway.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was released just last month on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The title has faced quite a bit of critique since then, and you can check out more details about why we think it’s a mess. Also check out our thoughts on its boss fights. As for how it might be doing in the market, its launch week sales were 63 percent lower than Battlefield 6 in Europe. Check out our coverage for more details. And while you’re at it, check out our review as well.

The user’s primary reason for believing it is AI-generated art largely comes down to the fact that the feet of the creature in the poster have inconsistencies in its number of toes. While the left foot in the foreground has only four toes, the right foot instead has five.

Another user has taken to social media platform X to ask whether yet another in-game poster, advertising the “Sauce Talk Talk Show” with the host seemingly having a tomato for a head is AI generated as well. This user’s question comes from the fact that the artwork in the poster is quite uninspired and looks like something generated with a prompt.

Another social media user, Minimum, has also questioned whether one of the sprays part of the Back to the Future cosmetics set for Marty McFly might be AI generated. The artist behind this spray, however, has noted through an Instagram post that the art itself was not AI-generated. However, the artist also confirmed that they had grabbed pictures of clock faces to create a collage for the background, and that one of these clocks might have been generated.

The artist further confirmed the fact that the spray wasn’t AI generated by posting a video that showcased all the different layers that were created in the process of making the artwork through artist software Procreate.

In the meantime, Epic Games itself is yet to make any statement on the matter, and since the Epic Games Store doesn’t require games to disclose their use of AI in development, no such disclosure has been provided for Fortnite either.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has previously taken to social media to discuss AI, and went as far as to agree with another X user that Valve should drop the “Made with AI” label on Steam. Sweeney said that while this kind of disclosure is important for companies and artists, especially when it comes to figuring out licensing deals, it doesn’t make sense for game stores to disclose the use of AI since it “will be involved in nearly all future production.”

“The AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation,” wrote Sweeney. “It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production.”

For its part, Valve had introduced the AI disclosure section at the bottom of games’ Steam store listings back in January 2024. As part of this, the company noted that listing a game on Steam also means that developers “promise Valve that your game will not include illegal or infringing content, and that your game will be consistent with your marketing materials,” and that the company itself would do pre-release reviews to ensure that AI use was appropriately disclosed.