Ask Epic Anything: Creator Portal and IARC | October 11, 2023 at 11:00 AM ET

The Creator Portal team will be joining us on 2023-10-19T08:00:00Z to answer your questions about the Creator Portal and IARC.

Submit your questions directly to expert members on our team – ask about feature insights, overarching development guidance as it pertains to the Creator Portal, career advice, industry questions, and of course, what you’re wondering specifically about the Creator Portal and IARC!

Let’s go!

Make sure to check out the awesome backgrounds and expertise of our special Epic developer guests featured below. :point_down:

Do you have a question for us? Ask away by replying to this post!

MEET THE TEAM

Emma Clarkson / Senior Producer, Fortnite Creator Ecosystem
Emma is a producer with experience on apps, tools, and games across all platforms. At Epic, she supports the teams developing the Creator Portal, Creator Analytics, and Island Creator Program sites.

Kyle Warneck / Lead Web Engineer, Fortnite Creator Ecosystem. Kyle is a web developer and engineering leader with a background in SAAS software and agile development practices. At Epic, he leads the engineering teams responsible for the Fortnite Creator Portal and Creator Analytics sites.

Gwynnie Wienecke / Product Design Director, Fortnite Creator Ecosystem. Gwynnie is a product leader with a passion for creating tools that empower people to do their best work. At Epic, she partners with cross-functional teams to grow the products that enable creators to make and publish content in Fortnite.

Becky Tian / Senior Product Designer, Fortnite Creator Ecosystem Becky wants to build product that help creators flourish and grow. She is particularly passionate about helping creators build and grow communities around their creations. At Epic, she partners with cross-functional teams to bring features such as publishing, teams, playtest groups, creator pages and many more to life.

AMA GUIDELINES:

  • Use the Reply button at the bottom. Please read through the questions to see if your question has already been asked, before posting your own.
  • Please do not reply to anyone else’s post—replies should only come from Epic. If you’d like to discuss a related topic in more detail, create a new topic.
  • Keep in mind, this is not a support session. Questions that are specific to your islands, account, or troubleshooting will be removed.
  • Don’t forget to have fun!
  • Posts not following these guidelines may be removed by moderators to keep the AMA flowing smoothly. Thank you!
5 Likes

Will we ever be able to sort maps into playlists, so if a map has sequels or multiple parts, you can open the playlist and play through all maps in it?

3 Likes
  1. Will we be allowed to make 18+ games in the future, or at least have blood and gore in our games?

  2. How will games be shown to players depending on the rating, will younger and older players only see specific games, or will everyone be shown all games to play, and it would just show the rating to help a player decide what to play?

  3. How will specific themes in a map decide its rating, ex: if there are creepy and horror aspects will it be rated for a higher age range?

Thanks for these QNAs, looking forward to your answers :slight_smile:

Are there any plans to bring more analytics and tools to the island dashboard?

3 Likes

Are there any UX/performance improvements planned for the Creator Portal?

  • portal is overall very sluggish even on a good internet connection
  • projects page could use more filters (ie. only show listed/unlisted projects)
  • analytics and monetization pages redirect to a different website
5 Likes
  1. Are there any plans for the creator portal to display statistics on where users come from? Currently, most creators use external sites to get a glimpse of where players could come from or what rows maps are displayed in.

As a creator, it would be great to have a detailed area where you can see where people come from directly in the creator portal.

For example how many players are coming from certain browse tabs, how many come from the discovery front page, and how many are entering the code or adding the map via the web browser :slight_smile:

  1. Are there any planned features for thumbnail A/B testing in the creator portal so a creator could see what thumbnail has better performance on player acquisition

  2. Will the analytics/performance/sac site be directly integrated into the creator portal?
    Constantly having to switch between the analytics/payout /dashboard/sac is sometimes a bit confusing :slight_smile:

  3. Will there be manual checks in place to ensure an experience is age-rated correctly or will it only be based on the form that has to be filled?

  4. Will the creator portal eventually show estimates of creator earnings on a daily basis or will this stay on a monthly basis. As a fulltime creator it is sometimes hard to predict what engagement payouts at the end of a month might be

Sorry for the amount of questions, I have a lot more but probably should not drop to many questions at once :slight_smile:

What will the process in updating old maps in the creator portal to have an IARC rating? Or would you just publish a new release?

1 Like

Thank you for AMA.

I noticed that some of the rules from terms and conditions do not apply to “educational experiences”. Could you please elaborate on this? How do you verify the content. What is allowed?

" 1.17 Educational Exceptions - We may permit exceptions at our discretion to our Island Creator Rules if the primary purpose of your island is focused on providing an educational, scientific, artistic, or historical experience."

Thank you

Another one, related to map updates.

How to update the map (eg. seassionaly) without generation a new map code but with memory calculation?

Thank you!

Are there plans to be able to store separate versions of islands under one code with the creator portal? Kind of similar to the BR playlists where users can select different modes like solo, duo, etcetera?

3 Likes

It would be cool if you let us know iarc questions for developers in advance so we could discuss here how to answer them.

Are there different questions for different countries?

If players can’t play certain map because of their age, will they be able to change server and try to play map in the zone where they are allowed to access the content?

Hi Everyone!

Please remember the subject of this AMA is the Creator Portal and IARC. While the team is happy to answer questions about other topics such as the gaming and dev industry and advice about your future as a game developer, please try to stay on topic.

Thank you!

If an island is not rated with IARC by November 14, will the island be fully deleted or simply delisted / available to publish again after getting a new rating?

  1. Most IARC questionnaire questions end with “Please note that this question does not refer to user-generated content.” - does that apply for creative islands? After all, they are UGC.

  2. Virtually all PvP maps are blocked in Russia due to the 16+ rating violence gives. Is that actually in line with Fortnite’s age rating in the federation? Is the game itself blocked in Russia?

  3. Horror games exceed Fortnite’s maximum rating everywhere but in Brazil &North America when the horror themes occur “often”. Does that mean Horror experiences are not allowed on Fortnite?

7 Likes

I would be great to get some guidance on the IARC forms. At least let us know how the FN battle royale island would be filled out. I was testing the form and basic 1v1 practice with animals roaming for aim practice was coming up as 17+ in the USA which means that FN would be 17+ as well. That doesn’t seem correct.

This same practice map won’t be available to most of the world and it’s a pretty basic build/practice map with roaming animals, etc. How will any map be playable in the USA?

Edit: I took out in-game purchases from the form and it is still coming up as 17+.

FN has: 3rd person violence, violence against animals, in game audio chatting. Those things push a game to 17+. Call me confused.

Can we see a staff member going through a sample IARC form using the FN BR island as an example?

11 Likes

Hi! When doing the IARC form, its specifically stated in each question that it “does not refer to user-generated content”.

All creative maps are UGC and since you’ve added this for all creative maps, I assume we should still answer them despite it being UGC?

2 Likes

Perhaps in the future it will be possible that people who do not have a SAC can still publish their directories without making money with them, i.e. without a SAC ?


Can we skip questions that say “does not refer to user-generated content” or does user-generated content refer to the players inside the map?

Edit: just saw the documentation mention that we can’t IARC Overview and FAQs

4 Likes

Can we have some clear guidance on how to use and understand the IARC questionnaire and it’s outcomes? This is a very short deadline and a lot of creators are going to answer these questions incorrectly, resulting in a lot of disabled islands.
For example, if a rating of E is returned will this still be allowed in the game?

2 Likes

Hello, thank you for doing this AMA.

I have very blunt questions that will need answers and some are probably an oversight.

  • Combat/PvP games are being rated Teen, but rated 16+ in Russia. The 16+ Rating exceeds Fortnite’s maximum. Do we assume that has to be wrong since they’re essentially the same mechanics as Battle Royale, which does not currently have the higher aged rating in Russia?

  • I have to assume combat maps are at least Teen rated due to refered violence?

  • If your game is rated E, with persistence, what’s stopping glitchers bringing weapons to non violent maps and handing them out, like we’ve seen in the past. This would break the E rating.

  • Because of that, are we to assume games cannot be E rated yet, otherwise there is a huge oversight here.

Thank you.

8 Likes