Epic Games' head of publishing strategy Sergiy Galyonkin has announced that he is leaving the company after eight years.
In a recent statement shared on Twitter Galyonkin said that October 2 would be his last day at the company. explaining that he is "not a good fit" for the new direction of Epic Games.
"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."
Galyonkin has spent more than two decades in the games industry and is perhaps best known as the creator of the analytics website Steam Spy, which launched in 2015. He later joined Epic in 2016 as head of publishing for Eastern Europe, before taking on his current role as head of publishing strategy in August 2017.
"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," he continued. "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."
Last week, Epic Games laid off 16% of its workforce, around 820 employees, with founder and CEO Tim Sweeney explaining to staff that the company has been making an effort to reduce costs. Although Galyonkin hasn't confirmed the official reason for his departure, it's still unclear if the news is related to the recent layoffs.
"Now, Epic Games is on its way to transforming from a game developer, engine creator, and publisher into a platform - Epic 5.0," Galyonkin said. "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."
For more, check out our list of the best free games available to play now, as well as our picks for the best PC games of 2023.
