This is one of the long posts I do occasionally, and I think this one specifically is an important one as I just came out of 3 years being with a team, to going back solo again, and seeing (and comparing) the state of the ecosystem 3 years ago, to the one today.
First of all, few things have matured. Some systems seem to have been improved and gone more intelligent. Portal has more stats now, submission is easier now, moderation gives you reason for rejections. I am not going to say I am happy for all of these things, because they always felt like a bug that needed fixing, QOLs haven’t been introduced yet to make me feel the tools are actually helping me. Anyhow, so the portal is now rigid and feature-complete, we now have stats like bounce rates and more specific technical information on what users are experiencing in our maps. These are great and useful (haven’t used them too much yet, so I can’t comment on them too much) and I am a little ungrateful by design so keep that in mind. Anyhow, so back to the point.
The space has changed, its normal for 3 years after all. But the biggest thing that stood out for me is that the issues the ecosystem had 3 years ago, are just worse now. Like, all of them. I thought we had issues back then with quality when I saw the zone wars and the 1v1s beat full blown games that were made with UEFN, but its so much worse now, even those maps now do nothing against constant spam everywhere. The same 30 creators rule the space, which means nothing Epic did helped new content rise, and from my tests its even harder to breakthrough now that what used to be. Epic is still adding features based on what the exploiters do instead of massively ban them all, meaning the content everyone makes is not catered for quality or the player, but to a strange formula that seems its made not to be exploited much (it’s still exploited).
Then the payouts. Epic made them so much worse, then introduced IAP which hurt both players and creators (players because they get gatekept now, and creators because they have to rely on gatekeeping content to be able to make a living, instead of the engagement payout that relied on Epic and their shop).
Then stability. Things still break, features launch broken (verse debugger for example, more recently), verse still adds new terminology that renders variables of that name as bad (“Last” more recently), nothing has really changed, we just added new labels to things. UEFN migration still broken, bugs that take 2 mins to report still remain broken or take 2-3 months to fix.
I am bit sad, because I thought the space would mature with all the feedback that creators gave, so why are we still repeating the same mistakes? Let’s take a deeper dive on why that is.
Epic has a communication problem now, even bigger than back 3 years ago. They don’t listen as much to the creators now, and when they do their feedback doesn’t go anywhere. We went from talking with actual people, to now talk to processes and roadmaps. We added labels to the goals but never addressed them.
Nobody is excempt from this. Devrel fees distant and busy all the time, giving the same blank responses or acting on items with something further down the line stopping them again. Epic has some accounts that reply on X now, but they seem to desperately shout “I am listening” but they don’t usually address what comments say, they just seem to be present so that they prove they are listening.
And the biggest thing so far: there is no advocate for creators inside Epic right now. That’s how it feels at least. With every update to monetization, tools, and roadmap, it just feels we are the guinea pigs to what UE6 will become, then we ll get no thank you and be forgotten forever. After UE6 this space won’t exist and I am 100% sure the only reason it does now is this. With earlier UEFN it did feel that creators were valued, told they can reach a goal and rewarded when they did. Sure the trash algorithm existed back then too, but even that was more generous. If you made a game that was liked by players, you could populate discovery in multiple rows. Not anymore though, not with the barriers to entry that have been added recently. Anyway, let’s not vaguepost though, I want to talk about a test I did and what came out of it:
So I made a game in the same way I would make a game in 2023, or even 2019. Aiming to get featured, really high quality, blow vision out of proportion, something I managed to pull off around 100+ times in Creative. I knew what makes a good game, but I knew nothing of analytics. So I made it. I expected it to do well because that same process has worked for me countless times in countless spaces (not just Fortnite). I knew that if I made something good, quality would carry. But it didn’t here, it instead killed the game. Why? Because if you make something good doesnt matter, you have to make something that the space is finetuned into. But even then, in the past we managed to create new genres and they would pick up as long as players had access. But we had Epic’s support as well, the moment they saw something great they would promote it and serve it to players. We had actual creator advocates actively looking for content. Anyhow, back to this test:
- New category (on release): 80 plays (testing is not substantial enough)
- Megagrant: Closed, try in 3 months (used to be able to apply all the time)
- Epic Picks: Rejected, never told why (and cant apply for a month, I can make 4 games in that time btw)
- Updated category: Only shows to players who want to cater to that experience (but what if your game is unique, which is 30% of content out there?)
- Thrills and Chills: Closed door communication on applying, cannot apply afterwards
- Player discovery: Tied to notifications when you have followers, but the process is 5 times harder than it used to be, so new creators cant get a good following anymore and get the benefits all the “marketing specialist” creators had back then
- Marketing promotions: Unknown how they work, seem very specific and rare
- Devrel ignored me when I posted my concerns about the above (and I pinged them twice about it, no respone just the occasional “do you have logs for this bug?”)
At least tags dont count anymore for placement, that’s something I really liked. Oh, and rating showing instead of CCU. Gives me slight hope for the future.
Anyway, back to point. I dont like that creators have nothing to aim for since UEFN released. There is no “golden standard” anymore, nothing to really work hard for. Everything feels it can cheated to gain success, exploited and all it takes is good marketing externally to fool the system that is built on FOMO. AI added to that, with games being copied fully and made in hours.
Sometimes I feel that if the entire algorithm were to be inverted (so what it pushes away, instead it promotes) players would value the exploration into new content (not saying this is the solution, but a step along the way). I mentioned this a while back, but having specific modes aimed at trying new content in fortnite would go a long way. An easy way for players to consume content (maybe through a mode) and save it if they like it. Think of it like how super mario maker works, a campaign that combines user content and easily shuffles through.
Then the algorithm. Epic tweaks the algorithm not to help players find better content, but block exploiters posting bad one. And this is the bad call. If you dont want to blacklist creators and prevent them from posting bad content, then why not whitelist the good creators instead? A whitelist (partner/affiliate) system could help solve issues and kick creators out of benefits that they need to really get into discovery or the hotbar. We had this in the FNC era and it mainly worked (bad apples always exist, no system is perfect of course), but you would see that the picked creators would be trying their absolute hardest and competing with each other to raise the bar. This is not something we do no more, instead we just steal ways we can make more money that a creator found, or improve our following (things that would be booed in the old community and made ridicule).
Now you could say there is plenty of good content out there, but let me ask you this: If the old system were to return in UEFN, will you have better content or not? Will you be able to show most of the content in a UEFest starting video or not? Can you show most of Discovery now to a new player outside the ecosystem and get them excited to come to Fortnite? Can you attract investors now? Sure, you can show the 4 maps that were made with Thrills and Chills that look great, but what about the rest of the ecosystem? The 450 maps that get published every day, what are their goals, what have you taught the creators to aim for? Nothing, just money. That’s it. So that’s what you ll get.
I am going to keep making the content I know players out there love, and once all the bs and blocks are removed and the space realizes it has potential, I ll be here. But in the meantime, nothing excites me in the space, so back to sleep I go.
PS. I ll write here all the things that will elevate the space in a short-burst format: whitelisting creators, player-reviews, player-tags, more Epic Picks rows, history of Epic Picks content so it doesnt get lost after feature AS A ROW, moving away from FOMO or grind and into quality/experience/sentimental value, and generally as a rule of thumb think if you would be excited to show the content you see to a real friend of yours, or not.
