Sergiy Galyonkin, Epic Games’ Director Of Publishing Strategy, Is Leaving The Company

Sergiy Galyonkin, Epic Games’ Director of Publishing Strategy, is leaving the company. In a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter), Galyonkin said his last day was today after eight years with the company.

In his statement, Galyonkin said he was “not a good fit” for the new version of Epic Games, but planned to remain in the gaming industry moving forward. It’s not clear whether his departure is related to the company’s recent layoffs of 16% of its total workforce – over 800 employees – as Epic Games spends “way more money than we earn,” as per a memo from CEO Tim Sweeney.

Galyonkin joined Epic Games in February 2016 as Eastern Europe’s head of publishing, before stepping into the Director of Publishing Strategy role in August 2017, according to LinkedIn.

Galyonkin also thanked the company for their donation to charities to assist Ukraine during the “early days” of the Russian invasion of the country in 2022, saying he would “forever be grateful” for their support.

The rest of his statement reads:

“Today is officially my last day at Epic Games. 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.”

It’s not clear who will step up to replace Galyonkin moving forward, but we’ll likely see further updates from Epic Games in the near future regarding the state of the company, which has had a rocky year so far when it comes to staff.

Lead Image Credit: Epic Games