For years, Fortnite looked untouchable, with Epic Games building one of the most dominant live service titles ever and shaping how modern multiplayer games operate, but the company’s recent decision to lay off over 1,000 employees shows that even the biggest titles face pressure when player engagement drops and costs continue to rise.
That shift in momentum has pushed analysts to question the long term stability of so called “forever games,” especially when they depend heavily on sustained player interest and constant content updates to keep revenue flowing at scale.
Analyst says the decline was always coming
Joost van Dreunen, a well known industry analyst and co founder of a major analytics firm later acquired by Nielsen, laid out a clear argument about Epic Games’ current situation and why it reflects a broader trend across the gaming industry.
“Empires don’t collapse all at once. They hollow out, slowly, until one day the walls come down and everyone acts surprised. We are currently somewhere in the middle of that process.”
— Joost van Dreunen
Dreunen also writes that “forever games, it turns out, aren’t,” and he uses that idea to explain why even a giant like Fortnite cannot escape long term decline once growth slows and competition evolves.
Three major pressures hitting Epic Games
Dreunen points to three key issues that together explain why Epic Games now faces a more difficult future, starting with the growing power of platform holders like Apple and Google, which have steadily increased their share of industry profits while publishers struggle to keep up.
Epic has already fought this battle in court, and those legal fights cost the company millions while also limiting Fortnite’s presence on mobile platforms for a long period, which directly affected its revenue potential.
The second issue comes from rising costs across the market, as players deal with higher living expenses and cut back on entertainment spending, which reduces how much they spend on games like Fortnite even if they still play them regularly.
Finally, Dreunen highlights how investment is shifting toward companies in Europe and Asia, where developers are adopting newer technologies faster and attracting more funding, which slowly weakens the position of US based companies like Epic.
All of this adds up to what Dreunen calls an “inevitable” shift, where even the biggest games lose their dominance over time as the market changes and new players rise.
