You have questions about Discover, so let’s chat.
Next Tuesday, SquatingDog joins us live to talk through your questions and feedback all about Discover with special guests! Epic Games team members Saxs Persson, Joey Messick, and Paul Odenwaldt will dig into the details and answer questions submitted by the community.
Please drop your questions below!
WHEN
2025-07-29T16:30:00Z
WHERE
Youtube
I have a game that has had Discover tests on the past and reached a decent amount of CCUs, but it’s dead now. I’ve been doing regular and important updates to it, but I haven’t had any Discover tests in a while, I haven’t had a good amount of impressions on any of my updates, so I can’t know how good or bad my updates are. Why am I not getting any Discover tests on this big updates?
Do the day and time of publishing matter?
I typically try to publish new maps and map updates on Fridays and weekends, but usually my maps don’t appear in Discover until days later or they never appear at all.
Algorithm favors constantly pumping out games instead of rewarding creators who polish and create complex games over longer periods of time. Although during initial publishing ‘polished’ maps are more favored, it feels like that is not done for subsequent updates.
Discovery documentation notes that for first publishing total work done is examined and based on this algorithm places it in discovery. But when we look at updates only last 30 days of activity are taken into consideration.
Shouldn’t total time be also taken into ‘this’ equation?
Currently it feels like short term/clickbait content is favored and even encouraged - what are the plans to change this?
At UE Fest, a Discover overhaul was shown off where, for example, the search bar is at the top of it. When will this be releasing, and what else can we expect to be included in that overhaul?
Looking forward to this! Some questions I have:
It’s known that sustainable success today relies on Discover picking your game; what tactical and specific advice can you give to Creators who have tested an island that seems to have good metrics (using the Fortnite API to compare), but did not receive follow-on featuring from Discover?
How does the community evolving tags impact Discover? For example, “1v1” as a tag used to be for 2-player practice islands, but now it’s primarily used for Free For All islands with 10+ players. Does this make it more difficult for a 2-player practice island to find success based on that tag since its KPIs will be drastically different than the KPIs of a 16-player FFA?
How does the team feel about islands “below the fold” (in the view more section) receiving almost no plays? Are there ideas or solutions being worked on?
Now that we’ve had personalized recommendations for a while, does the Discover team feel that is improving the ecosystem? What about featured Creator profiles?
Why have some games been near-permanently featured by Discover for over 12 months? Do you feel that’s healthy for the ecosystem?
Do you have plans to test not featuring popular games and see if they are still sought out by players? (For example, as an interesting test to see how much of a game’s success is Discover choosing it vs. the game itself; also to see if more featuring rotation is possible.)
Thanks for your time!
Will Epic Implement UEFN Games directly at the Epic Games Store?
Will Discovery evolve, to the ability to sell UGC Cosmetics, Prefabs, Meshes, Devices,Textures,etc
Or FAB in the Future will merge with the DISCOVERY to partial extent?
There any plans to Implement a “Official Blog Tab” on Creators Profile and in the Island Profile. Where Creators and Epic could directly tell of what was Added,Removed, Fixed on a update of game. Rather than relying on outside Sites and Apps such as Discord.
Looking to creators in discovery, seem that fresh “new creators” with a “fresh map” are pushed more than “old creators”.
Old creators with a a lot of map, seem having loose “power” when they upload new map / Update.
From my current experiences seem that:
update different map (simple addition new gun / device base on epic release) in a short period is see from discovery as spamming (any map get players).
Having a lot of map means too: collecting during the time a lot of “violation” .. that are not reset but live forever taking the old creators near the “Ban” update after update and considering him in the spammer filter
If not true would be nice to understand why new creators are more lucky than old one
What the Bad practice to permit to the algortm the correct clusterisation of the map ? I always read “metadata” but for strange reason (my foult for sure) map always go in a different cluster from the expected one ?
So What’re the metadata that need to be provide to the algortmo to understand what type of game is looking ?
thk Root
More “Exposure” related than Discovery but I think it is related,
Search and how it has been recently overhauled.. How things are searched has been very controlled of late, at least 3 major changes within the last 5 months.. Search now shows “fake” or delayed CCU, Search is now basically ignoring 1 word names as far as searching a keyword is concerned, and search now displays more popular maps above other more title accurate searches.
Were you planning on properly explaining or announcing these micro changes? Is search something that should be controlled in this manor?
Epic always said “update” did not impact discovery, but after every update map with low CCP (eg. less than 50) loose attractions and players go away. This is the effect of re-calibration of algoritm reset “memory” and restart analisys ?
It is great that we have an algorithm that finds popular replayable maps, but I think you should only use it for one rail maybe and not for all discover maps.
Use different algorithms to find quality maps, offering some unique gameplay. Not all good games should be “popular” and easy.
It is really hard for maps that require a lot of players to be fun to succeed when the map isnt as popular, have you considered adding a server browser to each map so a player could see all sessions on ALL regions that are going on, so it is easier to find lobbies?
As I state in the below post, bigger creators are a bigger influence on smaller creators. This includes the existing IP problem.
Is there something being done about influence, and IP theft in general?
I’ve uploaded 3 maps over the past couple months and not a single one got a single tab in discovery. Titles, thumbnails and the map itself are all good, even marketed them, one got over 200k views.
Before every single map you posted without any marketing got into discovery now it seems like it’s a jackpot to just get the new and updated row. Am I missing something?
How can I get into discovery nowadays?
