Tim
Sweeney

Fortnite, a game and media platform in equal respects, is still going strong and remains invaluable for content creators. In October, Sweeney’s Epic Games announced an update to Fortnite’s creator-payout system that sees streamers earn based on how much in-game currency players spend before and after streams, on top of the engagement-based earnings already derived from a 40 percent pool of Fortnite revenue. But internally, the epic expenditure on game development, publishing, Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games Store and third-party developer payouts piled up in 2023, leading to a 16% workforce cut in September, followed by the divestiture of acquisition Bandcamp to Songtradr in October. The FTC also announced a claims process through a $235 million settlement for Fortnite players to redeem unwanted charges on in-game items, adding to legal expenses from long court cases with Apple and Google, the latter of which Epic won in December after losing the former. On the bright side, Epic published Remedy’s survival-horror game “Alan Wake II” to rave reviews in October, then followed it “Lego Fortnite” in December, which was also received well.