Epic Games’ director of publisher Sergiy Galyonkin has left the company.
In a post on Twitter, the industry veteran said that he was departing the Fortnite maker as he was “not a good fit” for where the company was heading. Galyonkin joined Epic Games in 2016 as head of publishing for Eastern Europe before taking on his current position the following year.
He also founded data platform SteamSpy in 2015, which he is perhaps best known for.
Galyonkin’s departure comes as Epic Games lays off around 16 per cent of its workforce.
“Today is officially my last day at Epic Games,” Galyonkin said. “These eight years have been some of the most exciting in my career, and I am deeply grateful to my former Epic Games colleagues and Tim Sweeney for allowing me to help build Epic 4.0.
“I am also immensely thankful for the generous $144m donation Epic Games sent to various charities to help Ukraine in the early days of the Russian invasion of 2022. At that time, Epic Games was ahead of some G7 countries in providing support. It means the world to me, and while I wasn’t always polite during those discussions, I will forever be grateful.
“We launched Fortnite, which later became one of those self-reinforcing cultural phenomena I wrote about just a year prior. We proved that free-to-play without pay-to-win can work at scale. We challenged the status quo in game distribution with the 88/12 revenue share.
“Now, Epic Games is on its way to transforming from a game developer, engine creator, and publisher into a platform – Epic 5.0. I am not a good fit for this new version of Epic; it requires people of a different kind. I plan to remain in the gaming industry. I also hope to be more vocal now that I don’t have to worry about the PR department knocking on my DMs.
“Again, thank you to everyone I worked with at Epic Games – it was an incredible journey, and I will always cherish it.”
