Analyst says Epic Games is in the 'middle of collapse' as Fortnite's immortality slowly starts to crack

If you rewind the clock, one game you would find everyone talking about was Fortnite. While games come and go, Fortnite managed to keep the hype alive, whether through bringing back OG Fortnite or the never-ending stream of item shop collaborations. And it felt like nothing could bring Epic Games down while it had one of the biggest battle royales in gaming in its pocket.

That sense of invincibility is starting to crack. Epic recently cut over 1,000 jobs, citing a downturn in Fortnite engagement, and has raised V-Bucks prices due to tough economic conditions. Reports indicate that Disney is watching for the right moment to acquire Epic Games and Fortnite to gain a significant foothold in gaming. Now, analyst Joost van Dreunen, co-founder of a leading analytics firm, argues the situation is more serious than it appears.

In his latest newsletter, spotted by Wccftech, Van Dreunen writes that the company is in the "middle of collapse." He argues that games like Fortnite, often branded as "forever games," don't last as long as people assume. "Forever games, it turns out, aren't," he wrote, before drawing a comparison to Roblox, which, despite giving users the power to create their own content, remains financially unstable.

2

Dreunen identified three underlying issues driving Epic toward this point. The first is the disproportionate power held by platform holders, which allows companies like Apple and Google to capture a significant share of industry profits, something the Fortnite maker has been actively fighting against for years.

The second and third are rising costs and a broader market shift, with tariffs and higher domestic expenses pushing investment toward studios in Europe and Asia at the expense of US companies. Dreunen adds that companies in these parts of the world are also more aggressive in embracing new technologies like generative AI (GenAI) than firms in the West, where game publishers like Take-Two believe it has no place in the industry.

It is hard to disagree with Dreunen, given Epic Games' apparent loss of momentum. As much as we might wish otherwise, we may be witnessing the gradual decline of one of the most successful battle royale games ever. As Dreunen notes, "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."