Fortnite, the Battle Royale game that took the games market by storm – moving from strength to strength seems to have hit shaky grounds. Rocket Racing, Fortnite Festival & Fortnite Ballistic are all being “Sunset”, meaning they will no longer receive updates, and the development teams for these modes have been unfortunately let go.
Along with the Sunset of various Fortnite game modes, Epic have also let go over 1,000 Epic employees due to a downturn in player engagement, rising costs and decreases in player spending, and players have felt the pinch with the recent increase in cost of V-Bucks.
Along with indentifying $500m in savings via contracts and marketing, Epic claims this puts them in a more stable position.
But Why Are Epic Struggling?
Well this is mostly due to Fortnite’s expansion into creator made islands. Around 30-40% of play time is accredited to Fortnite’s Creative maps, meaning a bunch of players would rather play Skibidi Toilet Tycoon over Battle Royale, so less players are spending on V-Bucks, combined with increased payouts for the Creators, means less money in Epic’s pocket for development.
Epic have been leading when it comes to paying Creators for a couple of years now, far surpassing what Roblox pays the creators over there.
So what happens to the game modes cancelled?
Both Fornite Ballistic and Fortnite Festival: Battle Stage will shut down on April 16th, however, while the Fortnite Ballistic mode will be gone, Epic will be releasing all of the first-person shooter creation tools so players can build their own ballistic maps in UEFN.
Rocket Racing will last a little longer, and won’t be shut down until October 2026, and all player-made islands using the Rocket Racing template will be deleted.
On a more positive note for Fortnite, Epic are pouring resources into Unreal Engine 6, which is designed to handle the Disney Persistent Universe which will become part of the Fortnite ecosystem. Unreal Engine 6 will close the gap with UEFN allowing Fortnite Island Creators to bring some truly Epic modes to Fortnite, so we may well see some outstanding stand-alone games coming out of Fortnite.
What does this all mean for Fortnite’s future?
Well, it looks like Epic are moving away from making extra game modes and allowing the players to do so. This makes sense as a business, since creators share a portion of the v-bucks revenue based on player engagement for their islands. This allows Epic developers to focus on Fortnite, and all those extra games that players are making, only get paid if the maps do well – no more wasted money developing games that flop.
Fortnite has been steadily moving towards becoming a platform more than being a game for a few years now, the release of UEFN in early 2023 allowed a fresh wave of fortnite experiences, and gave players the tools to push boundaries with what they could create. Instead of just being a Battle Royale game, now you can play capture the flag, or even tag if you you want something more old school. For the young ones, there is Skibidi Toilet Tycoon, or aim training maps.
Fortnite’s future might look uncertain with these layoffs, but if they can pull off the Disney Persistent Universe, close the gap between UEFN and Unreal Engine, and allow creators to push their maps even further, Fortnite may well have a long term future secured.