Unreal veteran Sjoerd De Jong leaves Epic Games after 27 years

Unreal just lost one of the people who made it feel approachable. Sjoerd De Jong, the long-time evangelist who spent 27 years around Unreal Engine and 12 years at Epic Games, said his last week at the company was last week. That matters because De Jong was never just another senior name on the org chart. He was one of the clearest bridges between Epic’s engine team, outside studios, and the wider developer community.

In his own post, De Jong said, “After 27 years of Unreal Engine, and 12 years at Epic Games and Unreal Engine I have decided to move on,” adding that “this era has come to a close.” He also described the industry as being at a “pivotal point,” which fits the moment Epic itself is in. On June 17, the company used State of Unreal 2026 to unveil Unreal Engine 6 and ship Unreal Engine 5.8, while saying 5.8 is the last planned major Unreal Engine 5 release on its roadmap as work ramps up on UE6.

That timing makes De Jong’s exit land harder than a normal staff departure. Epic said the event drew more than 2,000 developers in person and hundreds of thousands online, so this was not a quiet internal handoff. It was a public reset, with the company now pushing toward a future where Unreal Engine 5 and Unreal Editor for Fortnite are folded into a single product. Epic’s road map puts UE6 early access at the end of 2027, with a full release 12 to 18 months later, and says the engine will include integrations with generative AI models such as Claude and Gemini.

De Jong’s background helps explain why his absence feels bigger than one title change. He started making levels for the original Unreal as a teenager in 1999, moved on to Unreal Tournament maps and mods, then worked at Guerrilla Games and Starbreeze before founding Teotl Studios. Teotl shipped The Solus Project, Unmechanical, and The Ball. At Epic, he served as lead evangelist and later senior director of product, and his resume says he helped shape Epic Developer Community, UnrealEngine.com, and Fab-related community work.

He was also one of the faces of Unreal’s education push, appearing in courses like Animation Kickstart and In-Depth Look at Real-Time Rendering. That is the part worth watching now. De Jong’s exit is not about controversy or a sudden break. It is about what happens when one of Unreal’s most recognizable teachers and translators steps away just as Epic redraws the engine’s next era.