Tim Sweeney, cofounder and CEO of Epic Games, is getting savaged online for an “out of touch” message he shared on X last night. In it, he told potential game industry employers that they would receive a “stream of resumes” from “once-in-a-lifetime” candidates in the near future following Epic’s decision to sack a whopping 1,000 staff at the Fortnite company.
“In the coming days, employers will see a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks. An important thing to understand is that Epic never lowered our hiring standards as we grew, and the layoff wasn’t a performance-based ‘rightsizing’ as companies call it nowadays. It’s a sound bet that anyone with Epic Games on their resume is in the top few percent of their discipline,” wrote Sweeney, who is estimated to have a net worth of somewhere between 5 and 9 billion dollars.
The message’s tone is a far cry from that of the official notice shared with 1,000 affected employees, and subsequently posted on the Epic Games website, in which “Tim” stated that he was “sorry we’re here again” after a round of mass layoffs in 2024, and assured the laid-off workers that the latest wave of Epic Games redundancies “aren’t related to AI.”
“these once-in-a-lifetime employees were so incredible that we fired them all”
LMAO so Epic Games has no respect for it’s talented workforce, that’s what you’re saying?? Enlightening stuff, Tim.
— The Act Man (@TheActMan_YT) March 25, 2026
This may be the worst response of all time:
>No sympathy or apology to the laid off workers
>Nothing acknowledging the future of the game
>Assumes it easy to find jobs because laid off workers have Epic Games on their resume
Nobody will think positively of you when you’re gone https://t.co/lMEjwXEois— Are Capcom Collabs Back In The Fortnite Item Shop? (@fortnitexcapcom) March 25, 2026
Many believe his most recent statement comes off as self-aggrandizing and tone-deaf, with some even calling for him to resign. “Genuinely what an insanely out of touch response to this whole situation oh my god,” replied one user. “You bin off so many insanely talented developers and people who contributed in such insane ways to your game because of horrible mismanagement and horrible long term bets.”
Several figures within the games industry shared a similar sentiment. “‘I didn’t fire 1000 people I flooded the market with once in a lifetime talent’ is truly brilliant word salad, absolute LinkedIn brainrot,” stated Michael Douse, Director of Publishing at Larian Studios.
“Team lead and union rep here,” replied Mathieu Ropert, former Technical Lead at Paradox Interactive. “Telling your employees your layoffs aren’t based on performance is an amazing way to motivate your remaining workers to take things extremely chill because it literally does not matter how they perform.”