If I had to guess, it’s because of money. There was more incentive at the time to grow fast and try to maximize profit than to limit growth and potential profits in case of a market downturn. Tim slightly explains what happened.

For a while now, we’ve been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.

I feel like back in March 2022 Epic did not really anticipate market conditions to continue to worsen. Big miscalculation on their part.