Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has spoken out after a former employee battling terminal brain cancer lost life insurance as part of the company’s March 26 layoffs.
In a post to X on March 29, Sweeney said Epic had reached out to the family to address the former employee's loss of insurance and apologized for not handling it prior to the layoffs.
“Epic is in contact with the family and will solve the insurance for them,” Sweeney 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.”
Today's statement follows a social media post from the former employee’s wife, who said her husband, a terminal brain cancer patient, lost his life insurance as part of the layoffs and would be unable to obtain new coverage due to his pre-existing condition.
“So now, as I face the reality of losing my husband… I’m also facing the reality of what type of funeral/burial I can afford,” she wrote. “How I will keep a roof over our heads. How I will protect our son and the life we built together.”
The March 26 layoffs affected more than 1,000 Epic employees. In a letter published to staff alongside the layoffs, Sweeney explained the company’s reasoning, citing a decline in Fortnite engagement that began in 2025 and led to significant revenue losses.
“Despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season,” Sweeney wrote in the letter. “We're only in the early stages of returning to mobile and optimizing Fortnite for the world's billions of smartphones; and in being the industry's vanguard 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.”
In the letter, Sweeney also said impacted employees would receive severance of at least four months’ base pay and six months of Epic-paid healthcare coverage in the U.S. Life insurance, however, is typically treated as a separate benefit and was not mentioned in Sweeney’s letter, suggesting it was not part of the severance package.
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