Sergiy Galyonkin, Epic Games' publishing strategy director, departs

Sergiy Galyonkin, the director of publishing strategy for Epic Games, is leaving the company after eight years. 

On X (née Twitter), he explained his departure was partially because he's "not a good fit for this new version of Epic; it requires people of a different kind." But he affirmed he plans to remain in the game industry in some capacity. 

At time of writing, it's unclear if his leave was planned ahead of the mass layoffs Epic conducted last week. 

"These eight years have been some of the most exciting in my career," he wrote. "I am deeply grateful to my former Epic Games colleagues and for allowing me to help build Epic 4.0."

Meet (and farewell to) Epic Games' Sergiy Galyonkin

Galyonkin originally joined Epic in 2016 as its publishing head for the Eastern European region. He was promoted to his current position the following year. 

Prior to Epic, he created Steam Spy in 2015, which takes data from Steam user profiles to analyze and generate statistics like exact sales figures for games and their average playtime. That work would come to inform the Epic Game Store, which launched in 2018.

Looking back on his larger time with Epic, Galyonkin highlighted the ongoing success of Fortnite (including its fundraiser for Ukraine in 2022) and the Epic Games Store. "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. [...] Again, thank you to everyone I worked with at Epic Games—it was an incredible journey, and I will always cherish it."