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Thank you to every Epic employee who has been laid off today for your work on Fortnite, and other games we enjoy so much. It is absolutely devastating to hear the news today.
Seeing the current state of the game makes me worry about the future of Fortnite. Don't get me wrong, the new season is amazing, but the direction Epic is taking is not great.
When first announced, I was ecstatic about the idea of a "Multiverse" and that Fortnite would become something more than just that Battle Royale game.
And it started with LEGO, Festival, and Rocket Racing right after the biggest comeback Fortnite has ever experienced, the OG season. Millions of gamers played these modes at launch excited about the new possibilities. And Epic Games had an opportunity to build on this hype.
However, Epic leadership has underutilized the initial hype by not updating the new modes frequently. For example, LEGO Fortnite Odyssey had an amazing multi-million concurrent player launch. Nowadays, the mode reaches a mere 15 thousand concurrent players or less, even though the potential of the mode, being a Fortnite version of Minecraft, is huge. But the updates were becoming less and less frequent, killing the momentum.
Rocket Racing faced an even worse fate. I remember playing at launch until the very morning of the next day - the day of one of my most important exams ever, but it was just so much fun. And then... nothing, NOTHING. A few Race Tracks at the beginning, but after two or three themed-seasons, there were no more updates.
Instead, we kept getting more and more new modes that no longer had the ability to bring in new players, or retain the existing ones. Meanwhile, the focus on modes with actual potential had been minimised.
And so we got to a point of having a plethora of different game modes that had not been built properly, and by that have been doomed from the beginning. Yet we are still expecting to get more new modes, including Arena Boxfights.
Looking back, was the Multiverse even a good idea? It could have been, if Epic tried to make the transition slower. Instead, we got an overwhelming amount of new content that failed to deliver crucial consistency.
Then there is UEFN. Another great idea on paper - engage the community in creating custom Fortnite experiences, Fortnite x Roblox - sounds good, right? Well... the idea has not landed well either.
There are lots of exceptional maps out there, experiences I had fun playing through, but then there is this ocean of maps which are just copies of each other, or copies of popular Roblox games. The discovery tab honestly feels like Roblox from Temu. Almost none of the maps have felt like separate games with their own identity. Instead, they felt like rip-offs.
Additionally, UEFN is still extremely limiting. Something that has been expected for so long, the ability to create custom weapons, still is not possible.
And then there is monetization. $722 million paid out to third-party creators. There are some absolutely deserving map creators out there, but sorry, taking a Roblox game, copying it into Fortnite and calling it a day is... what makes you a millionaire, apparantly... at the expense of employees who have put actual effort in creating a unique experience for years.
Is this the multiverse @TimSweeneyEpic envisioned? Shouldn't the management be responsible for this mess? Epic puts hope into the partnership with Disney, but is it really something that can help the game? Is Fortnite becoming a Disneyland what the players really want? We'll have to wait and see, but I am afraid I already know the answer.
Less is sometimes more. The Multiverse has failed, and with less employees, it is even more far-fetched than before. Isn't it finally the time to return back to roots and continue developing the game we all fell in love with?
I will still support Fortnite as much as I can. It has been my favorite game ever since I started playing back in 2018, having seen two FNCS Championships in-person, and now creating this account to be part of the awesome Fortnite community and to organize news for you. However, I feel extremely frustrated with the direction the game and the company are taking.
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