Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, have announced plans to lay off more than 1000 staff. In a company-wide letter, CEO Tim Sweeney blamed both "industry-wide challenges" and "challenges unique to Epic", including a downturn in Fortnite's popularity.

In addition to the layoffs, the company have made more than $500m in cuts by reducing contracting, marketing, and closing open roles. Sweenet says this puts the company "in a more stable place."

Sweeney, a strong advocate of AI, says the layoffs "aren't related to AI".

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If you read our verdict over the weekend, you’ll know that Mark and I found the anime-flavoured Screamer reboot to be a delightfully exaggerated bit of slidey arcade racing – albeit one that, in the story-based Tournament mode, sometimes becomes randomly, viciously hard for no readily apparent reason.

Judging by Screamer’s first update, which launched yesterday alongside game access for Digital Deluxe pre-orderers, those difficult spikes were an oopsie on the part of developers Milestone. Rather than send themselves on a Driving Awareness Course, though, they’ve "tweaked AI behaviors in various events to bring them closer to the intended difficulty," while announcing a future balance pass for the game’s difficulty settings. That’s good news for controller-chuckers and desk-smashers, though obviously as someone who progressed through Screamer before> this update, I claim entitlement to the same Smug Bellend rights as those Elden Ring players who beat Pre-Patch Radahn.

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