This past month has been one of the darkest and saddest months in Fortnite history. But what am I talking about? And if you do know what I’m talking about, I’m about to tell you what this means for the future of Fortnite.
There has been one bad news after another for Fortnite. Donald Mustard, the creative head of Fortnite, the guy who was responsible for all the creative storylines and live events, is now retiring from the position. Then, recently, Epic Games laid off 16% of its employees.
I’m about to share with you guys some terrible news about Epic games, some terrible news about Fortnite, especially the future of the game we all know and love. We will talk about whether there will be more Live events, new storylines, new skins, and new weapons in Fortnite or not.
Is Fortnite Ending In 2024?
We all know from a tweet about a month ago, in September 2023, that Donald Mustard announced that he is retiring from Fortnite. Donald Mustard is the one who created all of Fortnite’s Live events, whether it was the monster vs robot or The End to Galactus live event. He was responsible for the entire Fortnite storyline.
Now a lot of people were freaking out that Donald Mustard was retiring. Little did we know that this bad news would turn into much, much worse news than we are finding out about. This all started from a message from Epic Games themselves saying, “Layoffs at Epic,” and this is likely the reason why Donald Mustard left.
This was an email sent by Tim Sweeney to all of the Epic employees. In that mail, it was basically mentioned that Epic Games is going to lay off 16% of its employees. The reason was that the company was spending way more than what they were earning. They wanted to turn around this situation without laying off anyone, but the situation was unrealistic, and they had no other option.
Now, you might be reading this all confused, and it’s not that bad, right? They’re laying off 16% of people. That basically means a small amount of people are getting fired, right? And now they will be focusing more on the quality of the game, right? Well… we don’t know that for sure yet.
Fortnite Is Not Making That Much Money
Basically, what’s going on is that Epic Games is no longer making enough money to keep these employees, which is extremely sad. Back in 2018, 2019, and 2020, during the Galactus event during the Marvel season, Fortnite was getting so much funding from Marvel and all of these companies.
They were making billions and billions of dollars, and now they just can’t afford it anymore, which is an absolutely huge issue, but it’s honestly starting to make sense.
I’m going to explain what the future of Epic Games is and what the future of Fortnite holds. Obviously, everyone is aware that there haven’t been many Fortnite live events lately. And the most recent Fortnite event, the fracture event, was probably the worst event of all time.
Let’s be real; the updates that Fortnite has been putting out haven’t been the best. They’ve been retexturing guns, and they all around haven’t really been putting much effort into the game itself, which is finally starting to make sense. It’s because of the fact that Fortnite is no longer making money. The only way they’re gonna be able to continue surviving as a company is by hiring these employees.
But what does this mean for the future? Is Fortnite no longer going to be coming with updates? Did we just receive the last Fortnite Live event in January, and we didn’t even know it? The fact that Donald Mustard left Fortnite and made his announcement tweet very recently, and he actually quit right at the end of September. Does this mean that it’s the end of the Fortnite officially?
Why 900 Fortnite Employees Were Layoff?
Why did this all happen in the first place? Why are these people getting fired? Why is Fortnite no longer making money anymore? And is this going to contribute to the Overall death of Fortnite? The answer to all of this is Creative 2.0.
Twitter user @ImPeQu pointed out reasons for all the things that were going on with Fortnite. The Twitter user said, “UEFN, which is Creative 2.0, appears to be the primary cause of the layoffs of 900 Epic Games employees.
Since the launch of UEFN, Epic has put in a brand-new engagement payment mechanism that is completely different from the previous one. People’s pay was determined by factors like playtime, player counts, etc”.
We are all aware of how poorly the Discovery Moderation team performs its duties. Since it was clear that some of the badly designed, money-driven maps were succeeding and bringing in money for Epic, they didn’t care that they were breaking the rules and even included these maps in their list of “Epic’s Picks” for the past six months.
Due to this, “Skibidi Toilet vs. Ohio Grimace Shake Zone Wars” maps became the most popular ones. The worst part is that a single person might create ten of these maps, and they might all be featured, making the individual rich very rapidly with little or no work. The makers of these maps were making several thousand dollars from them.
Due to Epic’s financial difficulties and unwise spending and investing of funds, 900 of their employees were laid off. The Epic employees could have benefited from the couple of thousands of dollars that the map makers were earning. However, it was more significant to include really inappropriate maps in discovery. Some of the map creators were making more money per month than the typical Epic employee.
The UEFN Is Costing Epic Games
Due to the money spent on UEFN, the Apple litigation, and the Epic Game shop, things haven’t been going well for Epic lately. Their financial losses have officially begun.
As I mentioned before, Tim Sweeney disclosed that they were hoping to avoid layoffs but that their expectations became unreal. This is another way of saying that a risk was taken, and it had a disastrous outcome. It’s unfortunate that the cost is being paid by employees. Almost 900 developers lost their jobs because of this.
Everyone kind of assumed Epic would be the one developer who was untouchable, so this news is something. However, the future of Chapter 5 in Fortnite is currently looking very questionable. It’s one of the most popular games ever, and Tim Sweeney even once boasted about how brilliantly it was run when other businesses were struggling.
Epic’s Priorities Going Forward
So, where do we go from here? Are we never getting a Fortnite live event again? Are we never getting Fortnite Chapter 5?
In their FAQs section, Epic gave some answers as to what is going to be their priority moving forward. They stated: “We continue to put our focus on releasing our forthcoming season, Fortnite Chapters 5, and on Del Mar, Sparks, and Juno. Their plans remain unchanged. We will host a lengthy company conference later in October to go over all of our efforts and priorities.”
But is this actually happening? Obviously, as of right now, it doesn’t sound good, and Fortnite is losing money. So, will Fortnite Chapter 5 even happen? Will the next Fortnite season ever happen? Or will they just leave us in the dark and stop producing updates?
How Can Fortnite Make A Comeback?
With every bad news, there’s good news to every story. Now that they have fired all of these people, they are no longer losing money, which allows them to focus on Fortnite again.
One Twitter user who was one of the developers at Epic Games talked about some things that Epic needs to do to lift Fortnite back up. He said, “Not that Epic will listen to us as usual, but there are a few things listed below. There are things Epic Games can do to enhance Battle Royale and lengthen gameplay.
More than six years’ worth of content has already been produced. Literally, just turn on the rotation again. Why only use it once when you already spent money building it? Bring back LTMs rather than relying on creative map builders to do it for you.”
Now, this is honestly super disappointing, and this is super hard to see. Some of the biggest creators, the faces of Fortnite, are just clowning on the game.
Donald Mustard’s Replacement
The creator of Fortnite, who made it what it is now, is another character who won’t be coming back. Although he undoubtedly had a large crew at his disposal, Donald was responsible for the majority of the creative decisions.
Charlie Wen, the MCU’s new chief creative officer, is now in charge of creative decisions. In addition, he worked on League of Legends and designed Kratos from God of War. I can tell this guy is the real deal, so I can’t wait to see where he takes things. I’m hoping he can help Fortnite’s recent doubtful crossovers get better.
Will Fortnite Season 5 Be The Last Season?
Here’s the huge issue: Fortnite is announcing Chapter 5. They’re announcing it in season 5, but they’ve already been working on this stuff. I believe after Fortnite, Chapter 5 could be the last. And I don’t know how many more seasons they can come up with. Those are gonna be some of the last live events and the last updates we will ever see from the game.
So what does this mean for Epic Games and Fortnite five years from now? Fortnite is going to be focused on creative 2.0. Fortnite is probably never going to have a chapter after Chapter 6. We’re probably going to be witnessing some of the last Fortnite live events ever.
Fortnite might be ending because they can no longer make money, which is the most amazingly shocking, sad thing I have ever been able to say because I’ve been playing this game for six years.
The only thing I can think of right now that can save Fortnite is if some big company buys Epic Games and makes some profitable changes.
V-BUcks Price Increase In Fortnite Chapter 5
Chapter 5 of Fortnite is in trouble. Could things be much worse with nearly 1000 staff thrown out, celebrities banned from the item shop, and storyline actors now on strike?
The cost of V-Bucks will increase on October 27 during Fortnitemares, and 1000 of them will now cost $9, while 2800 will cost you $23. Even the prices of already-existing packages are increasing. The Transformers bundle and Final Reckoning will, therefore, be impacted in the future.
Many players have expressed anger about this, and it comes at an awful moment, given how Fortnite is now functioning after a recent change. It’s frustrating for everyone, whether you’re a player of Battle Royale who is frustrated by the lack of updates or a creative user who is sick of seeing 1000 Tycoon maps every day.
Since there is so much low-effort content spread throughout the Discover Tab, many map makers who put a lot of work into creating distinctive and beautiful experiences go unnoticed. It has been an argument point for months, but Epic is working to address other issues before the next chapter.
You Can Copy A Map
It still doesn’t raise as many eyebrows as removing OG maps from creative. Thousands of players were eager to play Chapter One when UEFN was first revealed since it would allow them to play older maps once more. That is until Epic made it known that these wouldn’t be made into money and that anyone attempting to create Chapter 2 and beyond would have their map erased.
Other organizations, as well as UEFA, do not want to be mimicked, as everyone has moved on to play Call of Duty levels in creative. Activision quickly became aware of this and issued copyright strikes to any map designers who took part in this type of conduct. And now, it would not go well if you attempted to recreate a Call of Duty map in Fortnite.
Players have been wishing for an Ahsoka character in Fortnite for a long time, and they finally got it in this Season Secret costume. The fact that she has finally arrived is quite underwhelming.
She lacks any edit styles or glider ships. Ironically, Ahsoka’s pickaxe is a Clone Wars staff. She is not seen in any trailers, so it just seems like she was thrown in at the last minute. They also placed a PNG image of her inside the season poster artwork.
