Fortnite is pushing creator-made maps with a YouTube-like redesign

This year, Fortnite’s big Halloween update included an unwelcome surprise: a redesign that aggressively pushes players toward creator-made experiences and spending money in the in-game store.

The biggest change is on the “Play” tab that serves as the game’s lobby. In addition to showing you things like your current game mode and which friends are in your party, you’ll now see a partial row of icons on the bottom of the screen, tempting you to scroll toward them to see what they’re about. If you do, you’ll see a horizontal list of what appears to be previous modes you’ve played and some suggested ones for you to check out. Keep scrolling down and you’ll find seemingly infinite lists of recommended experiences, many with garish thumbnails that feel like the kinds you’d see on YouTube.

The in-game store (otherwise known as the “item shop”) is something you might now scroll past more often thanks to a reorganization of the game’s menu tabs — at least if you’re using a controller. Previously, you could access your battle pass or quests from just a tab or two from the lobby, meaning it was easy to check what to do in your next match to get some XP. Now, though, it’s your cosmetics locker and item shop that are just a tab or two away, meaning it’s much more of a hassle to get to the battle pass and quests.

You can see how this feeds into itself to help court creators (which Epic is also trying to do with new features like creator profile pages to market their work). If there’s a lot of stuff to play in the game, it helps Fortnite compete with other metaverse-y platforms like Roblox (which itself has a UI that’s a seemingly infinite list of icons).

The changes, especially with the shift to the item shop tab, make sense for Epic’s business, too. Fortnite isn’t making the money it once did, leading to layoffs and price hikes for Fortnite’s in-game currency, and Epic is clearly trying to do something about it.