Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge Just over a year ago, Epic Games laid off around 16 percent of its employees. The problem, Epic said, was its own big ideas for the future and just how expensive they were to build. “For a while now, we’ve been spending way more money than we earn,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wrote in an email to staff. On Tuesday, onstage at the Unreal Fest conference in Seattle, Sweeney declared that the company is now “financially sound.” The announcement kicked off a packed two-hour keynote with updates on Unreal Engine, the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, the Epic Games Store, and more. In an interview with The Verge, Sweeney says that reining in Epic’s spending was part of what brought the company to this point. “Last year, before Unreal Fest, we were... Continue reading…