Adding on that, do Epic has any controll on how many accounts can you make on one person? I have a knowledge, that a spammer has around 25 accounts on the same person registered. This should NEVER be allowed.
Bad actors will be there if you don’t fight them, and sorry but Epic does not fight them. This topic is not new & without “us” Creators - Epic would simply NOT care. Because for you, you don’t care what maps are in discovery - the “good ones” or “bad ones”.
Hey @kalishane_eg thank you so much for the response.
This is a HUGE issue in the space and is a direct block for genuine creators to thrive.
Allow me to first list how this directly effects us…
LIMITED DISCOVERY AVAILABILITY BEING TAKEN BY BAD ACTORS
As a result of this, small creators (especially solo devs) are finding it almost impossible to get their maps seen, which makes it harder for them to grow a player base.
MOTIVATION
This makes it extremely hard for us to stay motivated to build in the space, i personally know many dedicated devs from the early 1.0 days, who have quit because of this.
THE DUPLICATION METHOD
Now to address the root cause of the issue…. the duplication method.
Currently in discovery, there is a method where a creator can duplicate an island, and have that island be seen as a “new/highly played” island even though it isn’t.
This tricks the algorithm into THINKING the map is new or extremely popular, which therefore results in discovery giving the map priority. This duplication exploit, needs to be found and patched ASAP to stop these “creators” appearing in discovery so much.
REFOCUSING DISCOVERY/THE ALGORITHM FOR FAIR AND BALANCED COMPETITION
The focus for discovery IMO, should be brand new maps, and regularly supported/updated maps as it has been in the past.
This made the algorithm fair for big and small creators, as it allowed even small creators to get their chance in the spotlight and to grow organically without YT, Tiktok etc etc.
Currently it feels like discovery is biased way more towards big teams, popular creators etc etc.
Organically growing in discovery, especially as a solo dev feels unfeasible for many now as some small creators can go weeks, months etc without any discovery time whatsoever. This, IMO defeats the entire purpose of “discovery” as it does not allow many creators to grow and be discovered organically. Instead it feels like you need to be discovered on external platforms then HOSTED in Fortnite, which doesn’t seem like Epic’s overall aim.
I don’t think playtime/engagement should be a factor in whether or not a map gets in discovery. Because this actively negates the chances of someone who is improving their map over time, getting in discovery. ALL maps, even poorly performing ones should still get regular chances at discovery, because they could be releasing frequent updates which drastically improves their experience, but due to the algorithm, people never get to see it.
Also, this is reinforced by Epic’s announcement of the “Sponsored tab” if big teams and creators will be able to pay to be constantly featured in discovery, then the other tabs should allow ALL types of maps even if they performed bad on initial release. This creates fair competition and ensures you aren’t catering to the rich all the time.
IDEAS FOR FUTURE CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS
Discovery is currently a mess honestly, and there are many ways to improve it. I hope you will take some of the following ideas (as well as other ideas posted by creators in this forum) to heart.
No creator needs to be posting a brand new island every day, and if they are, they should seek specific permission to be doing so as even small combat maps can take weeks to develop.
So by limiting the amount people can publish, you would be fighting the spam maps and also encouraging creators to spend longer on more detailed/immersive experiences.
Currently, it feels like Epic is allergic to properly punishing rule breakers in the space.
Many of these spam creators (who we have been pointing out for months) have been doing this for months.
They spit in the face of Epic, exploiting their systems and making financial gain from it.
This should be punished. (IP bans, long term bans, removing publishing permission etc etc)
The stronger your stance, the less likely people will continue to do it.
With this spam issue, comes people using the EXACT same thumbnail on potentially hundreds of different islands. In my personal opinion, i don’t believe any map, needs to have the exact same thumbnail, title etc etc. Some stronger moderation to combat this is very much required.
I’ve never understood Epic’s reasoning for mostly grouping these 2 together.
I think Epic should seperate updated maps completely from other new maps.
As this allows players to clearly see which maps are relatively new, and which maps have been supported over the long term. (Which can be a big contributing factor to playing a map)
Thank you for your time and response on this issue, hopefully we can work as a community to improve discovery going forwards!
There is no technical way to try and solve and stop the spamming situation.
A simple fix will solve the problem.
REMOVE a creator to spend a minimum $75 within the 90 day period and have an Epic Games account for 30 days with 7 days of edit.
Have the creator to sign up and use UEFN for free, but charge $75 PER island for publishing and that one island will come with unlimited republish/updates.
Paying $75 once or account for 30 days with 7 days of edit is too little.
$75 Per Island will end the spammers who are not willing to invest properly into Fortnite/UEFN and only take for themselves.
If this is true and can be proven, any creator who knowingly abused the system should have their publishing permissions revoked permanently (unable to create a new account), and I’d strongly suggest that Epic consider taking legal action, or at the very least explore their options.
This would ruin UEFN. 75 dollars is a lot for most people, especially since there’s no guarantee of earning anything back. The entry requirements aren’t that bad. What really needs to change is how things are managed on the backend, with more proactive oversight.
Bad actors like these have been a problem in the community for ages, and Epic simply hasn’t been active enough in addressing the issues, and when they do intervene, the fixes rarely work. What they need is to be more sensible and consider how the majority of the community feels.
$75 is a lot for some people, and I think that’s too high.
But let’s say developers had to pay an entry fee to publish, that would change things.
On the flip side, it would crush some creative freedom and stop new voices from trying.
I don’t know if this is what Epic Games is aiming for, but it’s an idea worth exploring.
Paying to publish is such a bad idea that’s like punishing everyone because of such a small amount of bad actors abusing the system.
I don’t get the issue. If i was head of this creative space i would post a ui info message when you open uefn and the creator has to accept the terms. This would state basically that spamming maps ect is against the rules and you will get your creative privileges removed if you are found to be abusing this.
After this any creator who does this spam method would be insta banned from any and all creative access.
The problem would be fixed in a week.
Hello KaliShane,
Thanks for the feedback, but identical thumbnails in Discover are only a symptom of the disease, that is the ability to create and publish duplicates of whole maps without limits and some method to ensure that they are eligible to be in Discover, which leads to more and more abuse by creating SPAM maps. It was told in the past that duplicates should not be in Discover, but as we can see, there is a method to get around your SPAM filter. We need to cure the disease instead of only applying bandages.
Epic is spending a lot of effort in other areas to improve this ecosystem (and it is much better than a year ago) and to motivate people to become new creators, so I don’t understand why this issue has been neglected for so long. It has been shown in this thread that there are bad actors who have been abusing the system in this way for some time already.
Regarding some ideas that were mentioned:
Epic doesn’t want to limit number of published new maps by one creator code based on the feedback from some teams. OK, but it doesn’t have to be a binary solution, you can do something between. There is no reason why absolutely everyone should have the ability to publish more than 3 new maps per week (with the same or even different thumbnails - that is not the main issue here). You can have default limit 3 new maps per week and when the creator code will reach some defined thresholds (minimum age of the creator code + minimum playtime of all maps published by the creator code + minimum number of followers of the creator code), then it would get this limit lifted, so it would not limit bigger creators.
But important issue is to do something about the fact that some creators are using many different creator codes to create more and more SPAM maps, because until this is resolved, any new restriction focused on possible actions of a creator code would be useless.
Number of updates per map could also have some default limit, because if you are doing more than 3 updates per day for the same map, that means either lack of proper testing before publishing or abusing the system in an effort to have more visibility. In any case, it unnecessarily overloads Epic’s moderation capacity, which causes other issues.
I understand that Epic doesn’t want to make tiers among creators to have it fair, but in its actual form it is not fair at all. And it will only get worse if you are not more active to limit bad actors.
Paying for the ability to publish a map would do more harm than good. Ecosystem like this should be without a paywall if someone wants to create and publish.
$75 is a lot. But here is why it won’t affect us as much.
Most of us creators already have more than one map published. According to fortnite.gg/player-count Average maps per creator is 6.99
We already have our maps published, so it won’t affect us. What ever earnings we have from those maps. We should save some of the earnings aside for when we want to publish a new map.
If Fortnite erase those over 6000 spam maps, and there is a paid wall for publishing, hopefully this increase discovery time for us creators.
Yes it will affect new creators and if we want to publish a brand new map. Fortnite Creative has been around for 7 years now, and it’s been abused for way to long and it’s time to crack down on this abuse.
$75 was a price that I threw out that would be enough to scare the spammers. Maybe make it $50 or $25. I don’t know what price would be good?
I think adding a price to publish a map will be to much of a risk to create multiple spam maps, and Fortnite have their staff and Ai filter detection for moderation, it is too much of a risk for the spammers.
Yes this!
I don’t understand why anyone would be opposed to map publishing limits in a week or month. Real maps takes some time to develop, spam maps don’t. Make the limit one per week, that is 52 per year. Even large teams cant possibly crank out more than that, and if they are that large a team they have a creator success manager and the Creator Success Manager can grant addition publishes. Small teams cranking out more than 52 are Spam accounts. 1 per week is even too much imho. Should be like 1 every two weeks. Or like 3 per month.
That’s what i suggested! 1 map per 1/2 week(s), ban tax info if they get banned from creator program (this will truly prevent them as you cannot easily fake identity) + ban their fortnite account or PC ID + sue them if they got hundreds of dollars. Those people are as much as worse as cheaters, do not forget they steal money from honest creators
All of this is actually very demoralizing, because what is actually the point of introducing all these new “devices” and systems into UEFN, if the only maps being promoted are these spam maps, and basic low effort PVP copy/paste. There are creators who spend weeks if not months on a map for it to be different and stand out, and who put a lot of effort and detail into it. And it all gets buried and never really gets a chance to see daylight. Very sad to see. At this point we should all just not waste our time and produce low effort until something pops, because that seems to be the way.
Hello, well, I am an individual and for any of my maps to appear (2 accounts) and more than 80 maps and my maps have not appeared for months or have appeared for 10 minutes in 1 year or more… This is how it goes for individuals.
To be honest the entire system needs to be reevaluated. For example you have og maps that are on discovery. They will always be on discovery due to being on discovery in the first place. For example… The Pit, in todays standards is not that appealing imo its basic with what I’ve seen. I have seen/played other versions of The Pit from other creators which have so much more to offer the players yet the og one is always the one taking the discovery slot.
This is just one example you can spot these og maps a mile off. The system should promote quality and other metrics above player count. If only the og map is on discovery then player count is going to be higher than better quality maps that aint on discovery. Its common sense.
Imagine a country infrastructure running like this… its like getting AOL dialup internet then 3 yrs later you get 16mb/s but the government still keeps everyone on dialup. Is this a way to ensure the system grows or to limit the growth. Hope my explanation is understanding.
I feel the entire system needs an overhaul. I would have such good ideas to create a fair system that would also tackle all the bad actors. Wouldn’t take much at all.
100% this.
Homebar should be New and Updated with a 1 hour slot, not a quarter or half way down discovery and only shown for 10 - 20 minutes .
Homebar should not be constantly filled with top performing maps or OG maps.
And many of us suffer like DrEstudio3D @D3d
I may take back what I said about paying to publish. I’m only looking at ways to stop the spamming.
Since you’ve posted that, there are more issues with discovery that still need to be fixed, discovery is a mess.
We have the worst to come yet, the option for creators to pay to be on discovery with a bidding system.
It’s going to get much harder to get on discovery.
This is what i think should happen if only as a trial…
Show a ui when you open UEFN for the first time since the update. The ui will show a message stating basic rules when publishing. The creator must accept this in order to proceed into UEFN. Lay out the rules ie no spamming projects just as the initial example. If they abuse these rules then ban them its that simple.
Any and all maps that have more than 1k CCU in discovery are removed from discovery. This would free up so many slots. For example if Steal The Brainrot which takes 5 slots is removed will the game be impacted ? The answer is no people have liked/fav it and will search the name to play the game. This goes for all other popular maps by all high creators. This would be the most fair system to rotate maps in/out and free up so many slots.
Every map that is put into discovery for being NEW should have 1 hour minimum on 3 occasions over 1 full week. If the maps doesn’t gain traction by this test then i feel the map likely wont at all. Having a 20 minute window is only awarding epic in handling the sheer volume of maps being published. The creator is suffering with this current working idea. Updated maps are different and should only have a 1 hour time slot on any given day in the next free slot window. (Only if a good amount in the island has changed)
Any and all creators have but 1 chance. If they do something that 100% is irrefutable that they would have known then they are banned from creating any content. Again look at all the issue we had with The Pit and the like and fav sign/item that boosted them to the top of most popular map in disc from a blatant scummy tactic. If i was heading this i would have banned them its that simple. They know what they did misleading players yet what do they get ? nothing or at worse a monetization ban for 1 month or something i mean seriously. They should have been banned and another map would have a chance.
It seems that when you have a big map you can break a lot more rules and have no consequences. I am only learning about the creator success manager from reading posts ect but what does this help with exactly ? Sounds like its another perk big creators get.
The ip programs and map creators changing maps to that brand. In twdu Hive converted their map 1v1 with every gun to that brand. It had nothing to do with the ip and how this is acceptable is beyond me. The map took the top spot and you have a big creator doing something like this to just suck up the attention. Again if i was i involved in this system this would not be allowed and a warning would have been issued for the blatant attempt to mislead players as thats what it is in effect. Adding 2 weapons from a brand ip does not in any way associate the game mode to that ip i mean are we living in the stars ??? Who at epic thought this was a good idea.
Epic should have a tab that only promotes new original ideas. If a creator creates a map thats new and not a copy from roblox then it should stay in this tab until other creators start creating new ideas. We need the next big game to be on this platform and not a copy from Roblox. There are so many unique ideas out there that die off from a 20 min disc slot. These type of maps should be promoted extremely high to get that next hit on this platform.
Fix bugs - Another major issue with this system is bugs. Every update is a gamble. Bugs take way to long to action. This should be done within 1 month max not waiting a yr+ for something to be fixed.
What you will find is eventually honest creators will leave to other creative programs if drastic change isn’t made.
As far as I agree… Honestly not happening, Epic won’t listen to most of them.
The only solution is to stop allowing creators to have multiple accounts.
Enforcement is meaningless while the ability to create multiple accounts exists.
With one account or at least CONNECTED accounts, the three strike rule should create enough fear that it enforces creators to abide by rules.
Otherwise, the meta will continue to be, get strike, switch account, swap map to new account.
There is literally nothing to fear atm.
Limiting the amount of maps you can make a week or month isn’t the solution. That is a pointless bandaid that will only stop good creators for being good. There is nothing wrong with having many maps on a single account, especially when the rule for 3 strikes exists to stop any bad actors.
The only solution to this is to stop allowing creators to have multiple accounts - or at the very least connect all account so the 3 strikes apply to the creator themselves. All FNCreate has done the last year is hurt individual creators who are on a single account, we should not be compared to these account spammers, they are taking advantage of the ability to have multiple accounts, having 50+ maps on a single account is almost a liability at this point. You are only hurting legitimate creators with this talk of limiting maps per account.
THIS IS A MULTI-ACCOUNT CREATOR ISSUE.
You have all the evidence you need but here is some more from this morning. Look at the names. This is the same person with 4 accounts.
That is a pointless bandaid that will only stop good creators for being good.
How would this stop good creators from being good?
It would mainly prevent bad actors from posting 30 maps in a single day just to try to get a spot in Discovery (and spam the database of Epic Games). Good creators wouldn’t be affected by this, because honestly — what good creator makes high-quality maps in less than a week? Tell me sincerely. I do, however, completely agree that duplicate accounts should be banned. But to achieve that, personal information should be limited to a single use — and the ID card, banking details, phone number, IP & HWID, as well as the Fortnite account of those who are no longer in the Creator Program, should be banned.
In an ideal world, the map publication limit would be a great complement to the “one-use-only” rule for personal data per account (phone, ID card, etc.).
I agree with the map publish limit and this could also be on a age rating too as for creators like myself who has had the same account from the beginning there is no reason why such a limit need be applied. New accounts/ones below 1yr in age should 100% have some limit. This would obviously exclude updates to existing maps.
I feel they need to do something like your suggesting with the actual personal info not just the account itself as again you could create another epic account.
Is it possible to create multiple accounts with the same tax info ? i would have thought this would have been disallowed by default tbh.
If you have like 1 tax info per account then the bad actors would start using friends details i can see it already.
What epic need to do is ip ban them instantly and put something in place so the person cannot create again or they are liable to legal action. I dnt understand why its difficult to fix the issue. Epic will see it as its peoples livelihood’s ect and lets be real anyone abusing the system to make financial gain is doing it deliberately and without any thought on the wider ecosystem.
Clean the system Epic #Insta Ban #Ban Hammer
