Epic revamps Fortnite monetisation, giving creators 40% of net revenue

Epic Games caused a big splash when the platform-holder publicised their disagreement with the revenue-sharing seen with storefronts such as Steam – claiming them to be unfair towards developers. The Fortnite publisher is now bringing this mentality further into their own games, announcing a revamp of their monetisation for Fortnite’s creator program.

For years, any and all Fortnite players could support ‘creators’ by applying a member’s unique code – leading to all future purchases within the game seeing 5% go to that specific creator. The program was less-than-ideal and so Epic Games have now announced a complete revamp of the system, saying:

“Today at the Game Developers Conference we introduced Creator Economy 2.0, the next generation of the Fortnite economy. Creator Economy 2.0 kicks off with the early access launch of engagement payouts, a new way for eligible island creators to receive money based on engagement with their published island content.”

Going into greater detail, they continued, “Epic places 40% of the net revenue from Fortnite’s Item Shop and related real-money purchases into the engagement pool. Engagement payouts will be made monthly from this pool to the publishers of all eligible islands, including independent creators' islands, and Epic's own islands like Battle Royale. The payouts are based on player engagement with each island.”

Epic stressed that the original support-a-creator program will remain, however its focus will lie primarily with affiliate members such as streamers – with the new program targeted towards actual Fortnite creators.

This announcement comes alongside the recent reveal of Epic’s Unreal Fortnite Editor which is making it much easier for creators to work on custom content for the live-service title. It will be interesting to see how both UEFN and the Creator Economy 2.0 shapes the future for Fortnite.

KitGuru says: What do you think of this new program? Are you going to start making custom content for the game? Let us know down below.

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