Sick! The Federal Aviation Administration is targeting gamers in its most recent job advertisement for air traffic controllers. The administration's annual hiring window opens at 12AM ET on April 17, and considering the ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers, it's calling this a period of "supercharged hiring." Rad! The FAA's YouTube video draws parallels between gaming and directing air traffic, and notes that the average salary for the role after three years is $155,000. Hella! The FAA is clearly seeking players who are at least old enough to remember the Xbox One and Bjergsen in the LCS, which puts would-be candidates around their early 20s at least. It's either that, or the ad editors really just picked videos at random from the pile of stock footage marked gamerz . But I won't lie, it made me smile to see that Xbox One logo appear out of nowhere. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing. "To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt," US Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said . "This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller." The FAA has been losing more air traffic controllers than it can hire and retain since the 2010s, and this trend only worsened during the pandemic in the 2020s, according to a report released in December by the US Government Accountability Office. The administration increased hiring every year since 2021, but at the end of 2025 it employed 13,164 air traffic controllers, 6 percent fewer than in 2015, the report said. At the same time, the number of flights in the air traffic control system increased by about 10 percent, to 30.8 million. Or, as the FAA put it on the ATC hiring page : "Join the BEST AND BRIGHTEST, the elite squad of 14,000 controllers protecting 2.9 million daily passengers." Applicants must be a US citizen, under 31 (maybe those video editors do know what they're doing), and be able to speak fluent English. An aptitude test, medical screening and academy training follows, among other steps. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-faa-is-encouraging-gamers-to-get-jobs-in-air-traffic-control-230308014.html?src=rss
Besides a wealth of Fortnite skins based on Disney IP, it hasn't really been clear what the entertainment company has gotten in return for its $1.5 billion investment in Epic from 2024. That could change this November, Bloomberg reports , when Epic releases a Disney-themed extraction shooter. The game is one of three Disney projects the publisher is currently working on, and is reportedly expected to be Epic's comeback after the company laid off 1,000 employees in March due to a "downturn in Fortnite engagement." The game is reportedly similar to Arc Raiders , a multiplayer shooter where players fight for resources before escaping through an extraction point, but with Disney characters fighting enemies instead of post-apocalyptic survivors. Bloomberg writes that internal reviewers have worried that the game's mechanics are "not very original," but the project is the most promising of the three Epic is developing. The second title received middling internal reviews, according to Bloomberg , and Epic moved resources off the third project "after reports that Disney was disappointed by Epic’s release timeline." “This is not reflective of the ambitions of the Disney collaboration,” Liz Markman, Senior Director of Communications at Epic Games, said in a statement. “We are building a new games and entertainment universe of Disney experiences.” While details of Epic's work for Disney are coming into focus, it's still unclear whether this new extraction shooter will be a standalone game or incorporated as a mode in Fortnite . In its efforts to sell the title as a "multiverse" and a competitor to Roblox, Epic has introduced multiple games inside Fortnite over the last few years with distinct mechanics. The developer announced that it would shut down three of those titles — Rocket Racing , Ballistic and Fortnite Festival Battle Stage — as part of its recent round of layoffs. According to current and former Epic employees Bloomberg spoke to, several affected employees were also working on these unannounced Disney games. When it invested in Epic in 2024, Disney wanted to build an entertainment universe, where players could "play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, and more." Epic's current plans sound less all-encompassing than that, but if they manage to increase engagement with Fortnite and Disney's brand, that might not matter. Update, April 10, 7:29PM ET: Added a statement from Epic Games. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/epic-is-reportedly-building-an-extraction-shooter-for-disney-220401382.html?src=rss
