Twenty-seven years is a long time to spend with any technology. For Sjoerd De Jong, it started at age 15, modding the original Unreal FPS in 1998. It ended last week with a LinkedIn post confirming he has left Epic Games after 12 years.
"After 27 years of Unreal Engine, and 12 years at Epic Games and Unreal Engine I have decided to move on. Last week was my last week at Epic," De Jong wrote in his post. The departure marks the end of a tenure that saw him hold the title of lead evangelist for the engine before moving into a senior director role on an unannounced project.
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From teenage modder to level design legend
De Jong's origin story is the kind that sounds made up until you check the numbers. His maps for Unreal Tournament 2004, specifically DM-Rankin and ONS-Torlan, became fixtures of that game's competitive scene. DM-Rankin holds the distinction of being the most-played UT2004 map of all time based on server statistics tracked through the Unreal community wiki. That kind of impact, built before he ever held a full-time industry job, is what put him on Epic's radar directly.
Before joining Epic in 2014, De Jong worked across studios including Starbreeze and ran his own indie label, Teotl Studios, shipping games like The Ball. His portfolio spans nearly three decades of hands-on Unreal work, which made him a natural fit for the evangelist role, essentially the person responsible for helping developers worldwide get the most out of the engine.
In his departure post, he described the scale of that work in concrete terms: "Dozens of countries visited, hundreds of studios visited, hundreds of talks presented, tens of thousands of people met, and millions of developers supported every year."
What he says is driving the decision
Here's the thing: De Jong is not framing this as burnout or a quiet exit. His post reads more like someone who sees a fork in the road and wants to be deliberate about which path they take.
"The games industry has always been an industry where change is relentless and inevitable, but it feels like we are reaching a pivotal point now and a potent mix of things," he wrote. He added that moving forward, it would be strategic for him to "come to terms with where [the industry] is heading and to work out how to adapt and excel at solving the challenges and opportunities that we face."
He did not name specific forces driving that shift, but the timing is hard to ignore. Epic recently unveiled Unreal Engine 6, a merger of Unreal Engine 5 and Unreal Editor for Fortnite, with a stated focus on AI integration and cross-game content portability. The broader industry has spent the past two years absorbing mass layoffs, studio closures, and the accelerating pressure of generative AI on every creative discipline. For someone whose entire career has been about teaching developers to build with Unreal, those forces converge in a very specific way.
If you want to see how Unreal Engine 5 performs in current games, our Directive 8020 PC settings optimization guide breaks down exactly how the engine handles upscaling, ray tracing, and frame rate targets in a real release.
The gap he leaves behind
The lead evangelist role at a platform like Unreal is not a standard dev position. It sits at the intersection of community education, developer relations, and technical advocacy. De Jong spent 12 years building relationships with studios of every size across the world, which means his departure is felt differently than a programmer or designer moving on.
What most players miss is how much of Unreal's developer adoption over the past decade was shaped by the kind of grassroots outreach and studio support that evangelists drive. Epic can replace a title, but the institutional knowledge and trust De Jong built across hundreds of studios is not something that transfers in an org chart update.
His next move has not been announced. For anyone tracking the broader state of the games industry right now, his full gaming guides and developer resources remain useful reference points while the industry figures out what comes next.
De Jong's departure comes at a genuinely interesting moment for Epic, with Unreal Engine 6 on the horizon and the company still recalibrating after significant layoffs in recent years. Where he lands next, and what he builds with 27 years of Unreal expertise outside of Epic's walls, is worth watching closely. Check our game reviews to see how Unreal-powered titles are shaping up as the engine transitions into its next generation.
