Looking for something excellent to read this weekend? We published over 400 articles on GamesRadar+ this week, but here's our pick of the six stories that you absolutely need to read.

1. A match made in heaven: Star Wars, racing, and roguelikes combine in Galactic Racer

Star Wars has been in desperate need of something a little different ever since the Skywalker Saga collapsed. Perhaps it'll be Galactic Racer that reignites some energy into the franchise, a fast-paced racing game while blurs a development studio's expertise with Burnout and Need for Speed with the sort of lush, cinematic storytelling that Star Wars is known for delivering. We played the game ahead of its October 6, 2026, release date and the early signs are exceptionally promising.

2. Epic Games' CEO has a lot of opinions on Steam AI disclosures. None of them are good.

The use of generative artificial intelligence in video games continues to be exceptionally divisive, if not actively volatile. Recent comments from Epic Games' longtime CEO Tim Sweeney have only inflamed the conversation, as he simultaneously comes to the defense of Gen AI in certain cases and attacks Valve over its requirement that developers publicly flag when the tech has been used on Steam. This story has sparked a lot of discussion, so don't be afraid of adding your voice to the conversation.

3. "It's huge for us": Why Obsidian is finally ready to take Grounded 2 to PlayStation 5

If there's one thing that's clear from Xbox's somewhat messy approach to console exclusivity, it's that live service games will continue to be widely available – all in an effort to help build better, larger communities of players. Grounded 2 is a perfect example of this strategy in action. Obsidian legend Chris Parker walks you through all of it, the promise of the new Into the Abyss update coming this August, and the potential for the studio's survival game to grow to new heights on PS5.

4. What did we learn from the Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-order campaign starting? Rockstar is ready to change open-world games forever

The silence surrounding Grand Theft Auto 6 has been deafening. It's been over a year since the last trailer released, leaving nothing but space for rampant speculation. That's why it was so damn refreshing to see Rockstar come out this week ready to celebrate GTA 6 pre-orders going live. We got some controversial launch details, we got over 60 new screenshots, and even a bunch of new gameplay details. If anything, this is a time to remember that GTA 6 is not only real, but that it's actually coming November 19, 2026.

5. "Destiny 2 fell short of expectations": Understanding the crisis enveloping Bungie

It's been a difficult year for Bungie. The studio has enjoyed the highs of bringing Marathon online and the lows of having to abandon Destiny 2. This week, the crisis at the famed studio behind the creation of Halo hit another bump in the road, as PlayStation CEO Herman Hulst announced a restructure of the organization that has caused widespread layoffs and a massive shift in priorities. It's been disappointing to see the studio (responsible for revolutionizing the FPS genre twice over) impacted in this way, and it's difficult to see where it will go from here.

6. Shigeru Miyamoto created The Legend of Zelda. He has some things to say about the quality of its dungeon design

Shigeru Miyamoto is responsible for bringing some of the most iconic characters and worlds in the video game industry to life. It's rare for him to do interviews, which is why GR+ staff writer Dustin Bailey had to go all the way back to 1999 to find the legend commenting on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Miyamoto had a revelation during the development of this iconic adventure game, and it's one that clearly reshaped all of the games that followed.

Much as Steam may be the dominant marketplace on PC, it's far from a one-stop shop for all the most popular games available. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, believes Valve is consistently shooting itself in the foot in ways Epic Games has managed to avoid - so far, at least.

According to him, a noted Steam disliker for reasons I'm sure are obvious, the fact that Steam isn't a more collaborative entity shuts out large swaths of PC gamers. "They have a nice thing going on on PC, but they reach what percentage of the PC audience?" he told PCGamer, when asked about Valve's place in the hierarchy.

"You know, they don't reach any of the Fortnite [audience], they don't have Fortnite and Riot's games and Genshin Impact, and many of the top games in the industry on Steam," he adds.

This much is true: there are massive communities Valve is actively closed off from. In the case of Riot Games, it's due to being active competitors, both in general and because League of Legends was started as a spiritual successor to the original DotA, and since Steam hosts Dota 2, they were never going to sit side-by-side.

Fortnite came out only a year before the Epic Games Store took off, making it unlikely the original version or the battle royale would ever be on Steam. The separation is frequently mutually assured, is what I'm saying here. But Sweeney looks at it differently.

"They're missing out on a lot of opportunity that I think they could have if they took the more forward-looking, open view that Epic has taken, and Microsoft has taken," he says, doubling down on what Microsoft charges devs to list games on its marketplace: "Microsoft Store charges 12% - really good deal. Google's now giving all developers a better deal, and has some really cool things coming for the future."

Valve could bring together "Team Open," Sweeney argues, and help the PC user base flourish. "Steam's got a pretty sweet business - a lot of gamers love Steam - but imagine if you could have Steam on all of the platforms?" he muses. "What if you could have it on iPhone, what if you could have it on Android? What if they carried a lot of games?"

What if, indeed. Valve has faced a lot of pushback over the years due to how it handles its market position. Steam was cited as part of Epic's legal battle against Apple over unfair practices, and more recent legal battles have brought to light reported instances of Valve being unhappy about other publishers selling games cheaper than on Steam as part of sales on their own stores.

Valve billionaire Gabe Newell spends $70 million on a new mansion to go with his $500 million yacht as the house of Steam fights monopoly lawsuits

Fortnite developer and publisher Epic Games has been in the limelight for its creators' stance on generative AI – and it seems it'll continue to be, as CEO Tim Sweeney speaks on the topic once more, specifically in relation to what he calls Valve's "irresponsible" AI disclosures on Steam.

It comes up in a recent interview with PC Gamer, in which Sweeney explains how AI could be a valuable tool for smaller devs.

"If you have a game with a really unique look and feel, you need unique content, and AI is a path to getting that with a degree of economy that makes it competitive with Fab or scanning or other things, but works for a larger category of objects," states the Epic lead.

He refers to an example of making a flower pot model for a game. "The value is not in creating a perfect flower pot. It will be an absolute folly to spend a million dollars creating a flower pot, because the real value is in building the scene and building the game and building the narrative, and the gameplay, and making it awesome, and giving it a unique feel, and making something that appeals to gamers."

Apparently, this process – "giving it a unique feel" – can rely on AI use. And that, according to Sweeney, makes the attitude folks have toward AI "unfortunate" – as well as Valve's insistence that devs disclose whether they've used any AI in games released via Steam.

"If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you've got to put it on Steam so people can wish list it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product."

Sweeney says that results in "a hater community trying to kill the game," going on to criticize the AI disclosures on Steam.

"I think it's really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn't do it because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does."

It's important to note that this isn't the first time Sweeney has shared this take. Last year, he said digital storefronts (like Steam) should drop "the AI tag" because "it makes no sense" when "AI will be involved in nearly all future production." He doubled down on this later, saying, "I hate to see Valve confiscate ever more opportunity from small developers." It's not an unpopular opinion among other Epic staff, either.

Stephanie Arnette, who serves as senior external development manager on Fortnite, stated that the goal of AI "is to make us more efficient" and not to "take all our jobs."

Suffice to say, that's not how many other devs (and consumers) feel… hence the so-called "hater community" Sweeney claims is out to get games with an AI disclosure on Steam. It's a hot topic right now, to say the least.

I doubt it'll stop being one, either, as generative AI penetrates more and more aspects of development – and, well, everything. I, for one, am very happy with Valve's system, though. Here's hoping it doesn't change.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says new multiplayer games flop because everyone's "already formed solid human networks in Fortnite, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, and Apex Legends."

The increasingly rare times I get to play online games with friends happen solely because of me, because of my efforts alone, no thanks to the other members of my friends group who usually refuse to abandon the latest Helldivers 2 Major Order to play one of my weird co-op horror games or Sea of Thieves, even for a few precious moments with their old pal Jordan. Multiplayer games these days, particularly those of the live-service variety, have a way of pulling players in and making them feel like nothing else is worth playing, and that's precisely why so many new ones fail, according to one of the foremost authorities on the matter, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.

I can't imagine the amount of people who can relate to my experience with an analog of their own that replaces Helldivers 2 with Fortnite, one of the most enduring live-service games of the last decade. How could you ask your friends to play the criminally underrated co-op horror game Devour when they've almost got the new John Wick skin from Fortnite's latest battle pass? Well, maybe you should get yourself some more adventurous friends, because maybe if more people were willing to try new things, games like Highguard and Concord wouldn't be rotting in the dirt.

"Users tend to enjoy games with their actual friend groups, and it is nearly impossible to move that entire group of friends from an existing game to a completely new one," says Sweeney in an interview with South Korean publication Inven Global (thanks, Automaton).

"Only the massive mega-hits that appear once every few years succeed in this community migration," he continues. "This is the decisive reason why many multiplayer new releases have failed one after another recently. Users have already formed solid human networks in Fortnite, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, and Apex Legends; there is no reason to leave friends behind and go to a new game alone."

There are undoubtedly other factors at play in the failure of any game, and Sweeney cites "many complex factors" including exorbitant budgets and development cycles that have simply become "too long," but multiplayer games specifically face the additional "unique barrier" of friends groups being too stubborn to try new games. In seriousness, the ubiquity of seasons, paid battle passes, and microtransactions is specifically designed to make players feel invested, financially or otherwise, in a specific live-service game and thus less willing to abandon that investment to start fresh somewhere else. That's capitalism in action folks.

Here are the best online games to play in 2026.

After Epic Games spoke heavily about generative AI ahead of yesterday's State of Unreal presentation, Vampire Survivors dev Poncle says it's "reviewing" the Fortnite crossover that was announced during the event.

Earlier this week, Epic Games released a video titled "A Look At Epic’s Art Concepting Process," where it openly admitted that it is using generative AI during the development of Fortnite skins and assets. The video itself features the artists designing concepts for Fortnite before using a Photoshop tool to generate details and speed up the process. Unsurprisingly the video also features a lot of moments where the AI hallucinates and the artist needs to go back and fix the error, which – in the wake of Epic laying off over 1,000 employees earlier this year, and the general cost of everything due to global ram shortages from it being wasted on AI slop farms – feels especially tone-deaf.

A day later, during the State of Unreal presentation, new crossovers coming to Fortnite were announced, specifically Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Control Resonant, Phantom Blade Zero, and Vampire Survivors. However, mere hours later, the Poncle account took to a Reddit post about the collaboration to say the following: "Following today's news about gen AI usage by Epic to create all sorts of game assets, including Fortnite characters, we're currently 'reviewing' our collaboration with Fortnite. We'll let you know if anything moves forward."

From the wording, I don't know that the collab is canceled entirely. Rather, it seems Poncle is looking into whether AI was used to create Vampire Survivors content in the game. Earlier this year, the developers of Phantom Blade Zero spoke out against AI usage, too, and while there hasn't been a similar comment from S-Game, I can see Epic's open use of generative AI tools being a hurdle for some collaborations in the future.

Why so many game developers don't want to use generative AI

Like a hyena on an injured lion, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is jumping Valve co-founder Gabe Newell while he's down in the immediate aftermath of this week's Steam Deck price hike that took the handheld's top OLED model all the way up to $950.

It's a rare sight to see an industry leader forgo the usual business formalities that typically mask long-simmering rivalries between top-level competitors, but on Thursday, May 28, just a day after Valve revealed its new Steam Deck pricing, Sweeney sent out a blistering tweet obviously, but not explicitly, aimed at Newell. In the tweet, Sweeney sarcastically feigns sympathy for Valve as it faces widespread backlash against the price increase – just before going for the throat with a jab at Newell's notorious affinity for luxury yachts and other outrageously expensive naval vessels.

"Everyone's being too harsh here," reads Sweeney's tweet. "There has been a significant rise in the cost of components that Steam customer spending ultimately funds, and economic trends have created severe disruptions in the component parts supply chain for megayachts."

Sweeney's beef with Newell goes back years to at least 2018 when emails emerged out of a lawsuit in which he slammed the "assholes" at Valve for Steam's controversial revenue split with developers. Naturally, the Epic Games Store living in Steam's shadow since its release likely has a compounding effect on Sweeney's animosity, which mostly seems to lean one way, with Newell largely remaining silent on the whole matter. For all we know, Newell is either asleep or scuba diving as we speak.

It's also worth noting that Sweeney himself isn't exactly a PR darling at the moment, with Epic having recently laid off more than 1,000 employees shortly after raising prices on Fortnite V-Bucks considerably. In this seemingly one-sided quarrel between billionaire CEOs, it seems no one comes out on top.

Valve allegedly had higher Steam Machine prices in mind before the Steam Deck hike, but I need you not to assume the worst

One Star Wars fan has given us all a full tour of the Din Djarin and Grogu homestead, and now I'm wondering if Mando is accepting applications for roommates.

The homestead was introduced at the end of The Mandalorian season 3, when Din Djarin and his newly adopted son, Din Grogu, settled down on Nevarro. In the show, though, we only got to see the house from outside.

The duo return to it in The Mandalorian and Grogu, and this time, while we get to see inside, it's only a glimpse before Grogu is forced to flee (with his Anzellan pals) and Mando literally blows up the roof to get to bounty hunter Embo.

But, thanks to the Fortnite collaboration, we can see the entire household. In the video, which you can watch below, we can see the grounds outside, including two blurrgs outside in a callback to season 1. The N-1 starfighter is also parked nearby, and there's a target range behind that. Round the front, you can even see Mando himself sitting next to the front door and enjoying some downtime, in a reference to the season 3 finale.

Inside, the house is simple, but very cozy. There's a bed against the wall and what looks like a smaller bed for Grogu on the floor beside it. On the other side of the house, there's a fireplace – with Mando's blaster mounted in pride of place above it – and a small kitchen and dining area. The whole interior is pretty spartan, but there are some rugs for decor. Check it out below.

Honestly, the whole place looks adorable, and I hope someday – in a potential The Mandalorian season 4 or somewhere else – we get to see Mando and Grogu spending a peaceful stretch of time in their homestead together.

"We wanted to build something that, yes, was a gaming experience, and you drop in with, I think, up to [12 players], and it's a fun adventure, but the backdrop is a very immersive one," Jon Favreau told us of the Fortnite collaboration. "And you could choose to go on the adventures within it, but you could also choose to explore. And we even developed other areas that we had either explored [or] thought about, so that you can actually explore and go throughout that planet."

The Mandalorian and Grogu is in theaters now. For more, check out our The Mandalorian and Grogu review, or our roundup of how to watch the Star Wars movies in order.

The Mandalorian and Grogu will soon be hitting the big screen as the first Star Wars movie in seven years – but it has also arrived to Fortnite.

Thanks to The Mandalorian & Grogu Watch Party Island, you're now able to see the first 10 minutes of the new film and hear from director Jon Favreau.

That's not all you can do in the collab, either. You can also explore Nevarro, hang out with Grogu, accept quests from IG-11, and take on the role of a Deputy to battle Imperials.

"Oh, we were very involved," Favreau tells us when we meet with him in London to discuss the movie and the collaboration. "I saw the opportunity of the partnership between Disney, Lucasfilm, and Epic as an important one. And the company that I work with, Fairview Portals, which deals with gaming and also deals with immersive and deals with new technologies, new media, as it relates to storytelling, we saw an opportunity to really lean into this.

"We'd already been working a lot with Unreal and with Epic, because even the Volume that we created for The Mandalorian was using assets from Unreal Engine," he continues. "We use a lot of Unreal Engine in the development on the front end of the process, with both the film and the shows. We use game development technology as part of a workflow that borrows a tremendous amount from animation. So, before we ever roll camera, we build out this experience."

As Favreau explains, it was all about crafting the most immersive, true to Star Wars experience possible. "We saw an opportunity, now that we have the opportunity to do a partnership with Fortnite, to take those assets, and create as close to an authentic experience of immersion that we could on the planet of Nevarro after season 3," he explains. "And so we pulled in all of our art department, we pulled in Doug Chiang, we pulled in Andrew Jones, the entire team that works on the films and the shows.

"And we wanted to build something that, yes, was a gaming experience, and you drop in with, I think, up to [12 players], and it's a fun adventure, but the backdrop is a very immersive one," he adds. "And you could choose to go on the adventures within it, but you could also choose to explore. And we even developed other areas that we had either explored [or] thought about, so that you can actually explore and go throughout that planet."

According to Favreau, this might only be the beginning, too. "Clearly, the scale is not one to one, but the finishes, the look: it was an opportunity to begin exploring what I think is going to have greater potential, which is not just using these tools for a backdrop of a gaming experience, but also to start to create immersive environments and communal environments," he says.

"And so this was a first step of what I think is going to be a much larger project when it comes to that partnership. We're also going to be showing 10 minutes exclusively with an amphitheater that we created on Nevarro before the film comes out."

This May 26, you can return to the amphitheater for a fan Q&A with Favreau, too. And, after 20 minutes in the island, you'll unlock the Mandalorian Sanctuary Loading Screen, while the Mandalorian Pen & Ink Outfit is available in the Shop from May 21. This is the Way...

The Mandalorian and Grogu is in theaters this May 22. While you wait, check out our guide to all the other upcoming Star Wars movies for everything else the galaxy far, far away has in store, or see our roundup of all the ways to watch the Star Wars movies in order.

The Mandalorian and Grogu Watch Party Island is here, as promised, and the Stars Wars collaboration with Fortnite has shifted into an entirely new gear. I'd previously argued that I didn't think anyone was prepared for the amount of Star Wars that was about to hit Fortnite – and that very much applies here as the new island is more than just a bunch of set dressing around the edges of a screening experience.

But that screening experience is absolutely the initial draw, and everyone knows it. The Fortnite island has a message from Jon Favreau on top of a 10-minute sneak peek of the upcoming Star Wars film several days before it's actually in theaters on May 22. If you're the kind of Star Wars fan that just has to see the movie as early as possible and you're not a reviewer or critic, this is your shot. Additionally, Favreau will also have a Q&A airing in the Fortnite island's amphitheater on May 26.

When I say it's "more than just a bunch of set dressing," I'm speaking from experience. Ahead of the new Star Wars Fortnite island's launch, I was able to play around in and explore the world of Nevarro created by Fairview Portals and Beyond Creative. Collecting bounties, fighting off enemies at a moment's notice, playing the role of pit fighter, and even hopping on a speeder briefly at one point. And, of course, helping Grogu.

After spending some time on Nevarro, I was able to speak with some of the developers at Fairview Portals to better understand the work that went into the experience – and working with Epic, UEFN, Favreau, and more.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

GamesRadar+: How do you balance bringing people who maybe are not familiar with the show or the upcoming movie, while also people who are very intimately familiar?

Jeff Brown (games director at Fairview Portals): Huge consideration from us and the whole team, including Jon. First of all, we identified that the Watch Party was a great opportunity for us, and having that around the time of the film launch, but also we wanted to make sure that that was expanded. Epic's done other watch party islands, but they're just not as expansive; there's not as much going on. So we saw the opportunity to kind of really dig in. And Jon proposed Nevarro for many reasons, of course, in terms of us being able to build something that's that's authentic, but also it was important to have one of everything, something for everyone. So we can go on quests, you can just get right into the action, you can go watch the previews for the film. It was always important for us to be able to include lots of variety to help folks that aren't as tuned into Fortnite.

GR+: As you're building this, is there anything like, 'Oh, we've got to have this. This is a part of this that has to be present'?

Matt Burdette (lead artist at Fairview Portals): I mean, we're building this under Jon's roof. So we have complete unfettered access to everything we could have needed to do this, like build a pinpoint-accurate Nevarro – we had blueprints, we had set photos, we had concept art. Pretty much anything at all we needed, we had available to us, which basically left no excuse to not build a one-to-one of some of these environments. And we also were pretty clear up front to say, 'If it exists in the show, if there's a canonical version of this that's in the show, we're gonna do it.' And we pretty much did, so.

GR+: …How big is it? I played what I thought was a good chunk of it, but I could tell there was definitely even more than that. Like, there's a lot there on the island.

JB: It's a good, complete representation of the city of Nevarro, with some changes for gameplay. But it's about everything that you would expect to be in the city. And then we knew that we had to have the shipyard, and, of course, the homestead, so it just kind of expanded from there. It's a celebration of the show, so it was important to include the things that everyone knew of it.

GR+: When you were initially visualizing what this would be, was it always sort of this, or was there an earlier version of this that you iterated from?

JB: It definitely evolved a little bit over time. Nevarro was always the thing that we wanted to do; it just had to be scaled appropriately. So I think when we first went in, there were a lot of ideas for stuff that we could do, and that ultimately had to be pared down to something that fit within the timeframe. And that was a process, working with Epic, working with Andre [Balta, senior director at Epic Games] just to find the essence of what we should do.

There was so much that we could have done, but I feel like we've kind of clawed back a lot of things that were in the original spec. So there's a lot of things that – and little details, little Easter eggs – are in there too, that we managed to put in.

GR+: What's the most difficult thing about building a Fortnite creation like this?

JB: That first part's really easy for us. Matt and I have been working together for a long time in full-fat Unreal Engine, and this is our first project in UEFN, which there's a learning curve, as anyone that's worked in this flavor of Unreal would tell you. I think that we've dealt with everything in a good way.

There's a limiting factor there, but it's also sort of a creative box that you learn to stay within, and you end up having to come up with a lot of creative solutions, which we have, and honestly, teaming up with, Beyond Creative, they've been great, and we've learned a lot about how to how to develop for the engine.

GR+: And how does adding Star Wars to the mix complicate all that, if at all?

MB: Well, I mean, you just have to make sure that you're, again, sticking to the authenticism of it. You can't phone it in like. You really have to stick to what makes Star Wars Star Wars. You have to pay attention to the details. You kind of just have to treat it as gospel. That requires a pretty enormous amount of vigilance, but it's like the proof is in the pudding as you do that, you really can feel it come out as you continue to build it.

JB: Yeah, there's spaces that don't exist in Nevarro either. So that was kind of a big challenge. But luckily, we had Doug Chiang [SVP and executive design director at Lucasfilm] as a resource, who was incredible, and he would come in and give us a lot of advice for the areas that Matt was building that are specific to the island that you wouldn't see in the show or the film.

MB: Doug Chiang had some fantastic feedback for us. Every time we met with him, the needle moved forward significantly. So it was great having him with us.

The Mandalorian and Grogu Watch Party Island is now available in Fortnite. If you're interested in more about the movie, you can check out all of our previous coverage of The Mandalorian and Grogu.

The upcoming Soulslike Lords of the Fallen 2 won't be tied to any particular store at launch after all. Previously, the sequel was an Epic Games Store exclusive, but publisher CI Games has since bowed out of that agreement, opening the possibility of the game releasing on Steam and other stores from the off.

The news comes from an official document outlining the change, published on May 18. This actually happened back in April, and the announcement was delayed slightly to buffer against immediate prejudices.

Although the publishing contract has been dissolved, CI Games and Epic will continue working together on a number of fronts, including through the Unreal Engine. "The conclusion of the agreement by the company and Epic will not affect the ongoing cooperation between the parties in relation to the Unreal Engine, Epic online services, Epic account services, or the company's participation in the Fortnite ecosystem," states the document, "and each of these relationships will continue and remain governed by their respective separate agreements."

This is a turnaround from comments made by Marek Tyminski, the founder and CEO of CI Games, who's been defending the Epic deal on social media. In December 2025, he proclaimed on Twitter that the "majority of PC players who want a specific game will buy it on Epic if it’s exclusive there."

While I don't doubt the principle to some extent - if people want a game enough, they'll get it wherever they can - clearly, something about the arrangement didn't make sense anymore. The obvious side-effect is that Lords of the Fallen 2 might be available on Steam as soon as possible, opening up a much larger potential audience, no matter what way you look at it.

This is the latest in what's been a tricky few months for Epic. Fortnite's prices were raised in March, to considerable pushback, and the company laid off hundreds of people in the same month. The dissolution of exclusivity deals, once a big part of the Epic Games Store's strategy for attracting customers, is another signal that wings of the enterprise are perhaps struggling a little.

Lords of the Fallen breaks even after 2.5 years, selling 2.5 million copies as the Soulslike RPG's sequel is underway

Overwatch fans are lamenting that Fortnite is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the hero shooter better than Blizzard itself is.

Earlier this week, the Overwatch 10th Anniversary Event kicked off in-game, and very quickly, fans discovered that it kinda stinks. Most of the new cosmetics are the Decennium Skins, which are purple and white recolors for the original cast. But at the same time, the Fortnite x Overwatch collab also kicked off this week, which brought Tracer, Genji, Mercy, and D.VA to the game as skins, as well as making some changes to battle royale mode with Tracer's guns, Mercy's Staff and a number of POI's taking the form of iconic Overwatch locations.

Over on Reddit, a post laments that Fortnite's crossover does Overwatch more justice than the game's own devs, with responses saying "I'm actually more excited to play Fortnite's Overwatch mode than the actual Overwatch." Another adds, "Epic just made Blizz look absolutely pathetic." Meanwhile, another puts it simply: "When the crossover vastly outshines the anniversary…"

It's even inspired some more conspiracy-minded posts, with one user theorizing: "The Anniversary event is so hilariously bad that I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of the Epic deal: push the playerbase over to Fortnite until the end of the season." In the same vein, another says, "I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard did this on purpose; make a lackluster 10th anniversary event in their own game and let Epic do the heavy lifting with a Fortnite collab to rake in profits that way," and that it's "kind of a shame they'd put so much stock into another game rather than their own honestly."

Truthfully, I highly doubt the event is intentionally bad, but I can definitely understand how underwhelming some are finding it. Although, to Overwatch's credit, it did just relaunch with multiple new characters earlier this year, which is a pretty significant thing for a big milestone year.

Fortnite's most embarrassing cause of death has been removed, but Epic Games has managed to balance it shockingly well.

In a win for clumsy players everywhere, Epic Games is removing death by fall damage from Fortnite, although the alternative isn't exactly a buff either.

I'm sure its a universal experience for anyone who has played Fortnite that you'll be playing a match and going on an absolute tear through the battlefield. '10 kills on the board right now, just wiped out Tomato Town' level domination, only for you to make one wrong move, fall off of a cliff and instantly die, ruining everything. While multiplayer games in general are hotbeds for frustration, there's a special type of frustrating that comes with the dreaded fall damage death, and clearly Epic Games knows this, as it's killing off that type of death entirely.

As reported by Fortnite leaker HYPEX, Fortnite is removing fall damage deaths from its regular Battle Royale mode, and – the actually good mode – Zero Build. Given that part of the strategy in build mode is to destroy opposition structures and give them a big fall to contend with, this could have a massive effect on the game's balance. Although thankfully, Epic has seemingly balanced it so that falling during battle is as good as death anyway.

As the leaker notes, fall damage will now send your character into a "splat" animation, which – as the name implies – splats them onto the ground, with a delay before they get back up. Your health and shields will also be fully drained too, leaving you with 1hp to survive with.

I'm actually all for this, and think it's a perfect example of a good way to rebalance the game, effectively removing the frustration of dying to fall damage when wandering around the map by giving you a chance to recover, while also not removing the threat of dying to fall damage when you're fighting someone.

Epic knows everyone's afraid "AI is going to take all our jobs," but Fortnite dev insists the goal of AI "is to make us more efficient."

Video game production is a big, expensive process that now tends to involve a bunch of people working across a whole lot of different studios. According to Stephanie Arnette, who serves as senior external development manager on Fortnite, AI isn't coming to kill jobs, whether that be at Epic itself or for its co-development partners.

"Epic has been exploring different AI tooling that we can use to help support our games," Arnette said at a recent Gamescom Latam panel attended by GamesRadar+. "I know everyone's biggest fear is, 'Oh my god, AI is going to take all our jobs.' That's not our goal. The goal is to make us more efficient."

Arnette suggested that if "the thing that takes you 10 hours to do" suddenly "doesn't take you as long," that's a compelling use case for AI. Part of that "tooling" is being explored "in the art realm as well," she added, but didn't detail exactly what shape that might take.

Regardless, Arnette insisted that Epic is leading the charge on whatever AI is implemented in Fortnite's development process. "There really is no opening for a partner to try to put their AI info or tooling into ours," she explained, "because it's such a massive, massive company, so it would always be from our direction outward, and not the other way around."

This notion that AI is going to be used to make things more efficient for developers is one we've heard over and over again – including just today, when Sony detailed how Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered made use of a new AI animation tool. We're already seeing games that have been built using AI tech coming to market, and while many players are holding firm against obvious AI-generated content in their entertainment, those quieter uses of the tech are difficult to pick out.

Of course, the actual power of AI tech to make developers "more efficient" is difficult to measure, and the real question of whether those efficiency gains will be used as justification for layoffs remains to be answered. After all, you're not technically being replaced by AI if your boss decides that with all these new efficiencies that your co-worker can do your job too.

Take-Two CEO says if AI replaces anyone, it should be Elon Musk after his claim GTA 6 could come from gen-AI before Rockstar: "The richest guy on Earth, wouldn't that be job number one for AI to take?"

As I creep through a derelict Star Destroyer, simultaneously looting and avoiding Darth Vader, I jump when I turn a corner and see the red of his lightsaber reflecting off the dead steel all around. Minutes before, I'd been battling against Imperials to hold bases on a frozen planet that was never explicitly called Hoth but wasn't not Hoth either. After escaping Vader, I go on to build a small-but-respectable droid business on a sandy planet.

All through Fortnite.

The current evolution of popular games of a certain size goes something like this: release, get popular, make brand deals, release creative tools, make more brand deals, launch a platform, make even more brand deals. Relatedly, Epic Games' Fortnite is now adding the ability to use Star Wars assets in Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and Fortnite Creative to create all kinds of Star Wars-inspired islands, like the ones mentioned above.

Use the Force (in UEFN)

"Since 2019, Fortnite has been a gateway into the Star Wars galaxy," says Andre Balta, senior director at Epic Games. "What started off as limited-time events grew to seasons and in some cases, a complete takeover of Fortnite with Star Wars lore. Our team decided to take all those amazing weapons, assets, vehicles, and characters, and expose them to our Fortnite development community – and the response has been incredible."

"It was pretty clear from the start when we announced that every Fortnite creator has their own Star Wars story they want to tell," continues Balta. "It's been awesome to see the passion come through, and this will lead to Fortnite having the largest collection of official Star Wars experiences for players to enjoy."

None of this is exactly news – Epic Games announced the curated Star Wars assets and tools back at the beginning of April – but now it's officially here. But alongside hundreds of these Star Wars-tinged Fortnite islands that people have been crafting in anticipation of launch, Epic Games and Lucafilm have partnered with three different creators in order to "set a really high bar with three exemplar islands," according to Balta.

Those three are:

• Galactic Siege from JOGO Studios (island code: 5003-9856-3648)
  • "Fight in large-scale PvP class-based battles with 10v10 combat across iconic Star Wars planets."
• Escape Vader from Beyond Creative (island code: 7285-4185-5428)
  • "Hide, run, and try to survive in this 4-player co-op game where you attempt to escape the terrifying Sith Lord, Darth Vader."
• Droid Tycoon from FOAD (island code: 7865-8305-9184)
  • "Build and customize droids using authentic Star Wars blueprints, manage your workshop and factory systems, and unlock rare components and special missions."

Ahead of their release, I'm able to play around in each island during an event hosted by Epic Games. This is me doing more than getting my feet wet; I've not messed with any of the UEFN Fortnite islands previously, so it's more like diving straight into the deep end – three times.

"Interactive entertainment is rapidly becoming one of the defining forces in how audiences experience stories, and Disney is fully embracing that evolution," says Sean Shoptaw, executive VP of Disney Games and Digital Entertainment. "Games offer a uniquely powerful way to deepen engagement, expand our worlds, and connect with fans in real time. As this space continues to grow, we see extraordinary potential to elevate Disney storytelling in ways that are innovative, social, and built for the way people play today."

Shoptaw's not exactly wrong, despite the vested interest, about gaming's evolution. It's not hard to look at the rise of Roblox and user-generated content (UGC) more broadly and see that there's a sea change in progress, if not already complete. Less and less emphasis and money seems to be getting put behind a more traditional development path while more of that is refocused on simply giving players the tools to amuse themselves.

After playing a good bit of Droid Tycoon – basically a business sim of building droids, selling droids, and having them complete tasks in order to earn money over time – following both Galactic Siege and Escape Vader, the overwhelming impression I'm left with is that a lot of effort has gone into simulating all sorts of genres and experiences using the same box of building blocks. It's impressive, but something is lost when everything's painted using the same brush.

These are all probably great examples of the sort of work you can do within UEFN, but it's hard to escape the feeling that it's largely simulacra; ghostly imitations of larger-scale experiences and games. If you squint, Galactic Siege is basically "what if we made Battlefront in Fortnite" and Escape Vader borrows mechanically from its peers while throwing a coat of Star Wars paint on top. If your only game is Fortnite, however, and you have no further point of reference, I bet they'll really hit a sweet spot.

Droids you're looking for

"We've been in UEFN since the day it was announced at GDC 2023 and been shipping games," says Kevin Marciano, co-founder and CEO of the game studio Future Trash – which creates under the name FOAD in Fortnite. "We are a team on the platform known for crafting our own original IP, and that's kind of like our reputation and the types of games that we ship. Over time, we started to build relationships with the developer community and with Epic, and so we were very fortunate enough to be considered for this opportunity, and as lifelong Star Wars fans, saw this as one of the coolest things we could work on, and so we dove right in."

FOAD is an interesting case, because the name is actually also associated with Future Trash's eponymous "flagship IP," which it had been working on prior to getting involved with UEFN. The playtest is still available on Steam, if you're looking to try out a new "online competitive platformer battle royale party game," but the vertical slice apparently struggled to break through. While the team ultimately took a step back to work on all this Fortnite stuff, the goal appears to be to eventually return to the "core game" as well.

If the new Star Wars Fortnite island is any indication, it would appear that FOAD is in a good place overall, so it's not shocking that the OG FOAD has taken something of a backseat. If you're one of three exemplary pillars for something this big, you're clearly doing something right.

But… why droids? I had to know. Given everything that Star Wars encompasses, lasers and Jedi and starfighters and so on, why tie your reputation to droids? The answer is fairly nuanced, but there's also a short version.

"We like droids," says Scott Ulliman, creative director and co-founder of Future Trash aka FOAD. "A lot."

"Also, part of what we are good at is creating assets," he continues, "and we wanted to do something that we thought was going to be a little less likely to be made a bunch of times, and something we felt passionate about. When it comes to the kind of games we're interested in making and playing – you know, creature, companion, sidekick type stuff – the droids felt like a really good fit for that."

If you're wondering why creating assets would be such a strong skill to have, given that Epic Games is explicitly providing a whole bunch of them in the Star Wars toolkit, so did I. According to Ulliman, there are no droid assets; FOAD made all of them itself for Droid Tycoon. All 42 unique droids, along with 10 more that are planned for further updates.

It's a whole lot of droids to make, especially for launch, but when I ask why FOAD bothered to make so many droids, Ulliman says that it just sort of… happened.

"It was a snowball," he admits. "We wanted to make 20. We thought with the game we were building, 20 was a really good number. As we started building them, and we started playtesting, and you see them, you know, once, twice, three times in the game – the most consistent feedback we got internally and from Epic, and we agreed, is, 'We want more droids.' So we kept making more droids."

"It's made the game significantly more interesting," he says. "There's a lot more to unlock and see. You get to learn a lot more about Star Wars. We got to do some really niche droids too, really weird ones that are all canon and haven't been seen a lot, and Disney was very welcoming for us to build some of those out. So honestly, it was one of those things where we knew it was about the droids, but actually seeing them animated in the game just became this thing where we all wanted to see our favorites in there and other people's favorites. And there's a lot of favorites for droids."

Fortnite is currently available on… pretty much every platform. The Star Wars UEFN islands mentioned above are available on May 1. While you wait, maybe take a peek at our ranking of the best Star Wars games.

When it comes to bugs and glitches in Fortnite, Epic is pretty ruthless about what gets priority, according to CEO Tim Sweeney. There's a queue of importance, but the low-priority items get wiped periodically, something that's prompted one of the leads on Rust to provide an alternative methodology.

On Twitter, Sweeney responded to a report that Epic just deletes the backlog of bug reports, even when entries haven't been looked at yet. "We prioritize reported bugs," he says. "We fix them in priority order. At the bottom are low-priority, low-impact bugs. We find the cutoff point where fixing those bugs is less valuable to the game than other things, and we drop them."

He calls this "normal software development," and clarifies this never includes things players are experiencing to a widespread degree. "Bugs that many players experience and that affect the quality of the game are not those abandoned low-priority, low-impact bugs," Sweeney states. "They are higher priority bugs the team is tasked with fixing. When that takes time, it is because they are hard to track down, fix, or deploy."

One of the responses comes from Alistair McFarlane, COO and company director of Facepunch Studios, the team behind Rust, who says they keep reports going back years. "Our backlog on Rust is usually several hundred of low priority bugs, many are bugs to us rather than players, but we never deleted them," he tweets.

"Generally we have cleanup sprints to tackle them, allow QA to fix them, or they're a good starting point for new staff to resolve and becomes familiar with the project during their starting period," he adds. "A lot of our low priority bugs can date back years, it's a burden on QA and the whole team to know if its still broken or fixed in passing."

He finishes by saying he "can see the logic in deleting them," however, he'd "rather have them logged than forgotten." There's logic both ways, but when it comes to remedying issues within a game, I can imagine having the full extent of your bug reports is more helpful than not. That's easy to say though, when something like Fortnite must have an avalanche of them on a regular basis. Either way, as long as things get fixed, that's the most important part.

"Fortnite's cultural moment is starting to fade," games analyst says amid mass layoffs, and its downturn is part of the "erosion of American leadership" in video games

Fortnite's not dead, but it's suffering a "downturn" in engagement that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has blamed for recent layoffs affecting over 1,000 employees. According to one industry analyst, Epic's declining fortunes mark one example of a broader collapse of "American cultural dominance" in video games.

"It's in the nature of empires to destroy themselves," NYU professor and games industry researcher Joost van Dreunen dramatically begins in a new analysis. As he explains, "the news of Epic Games' latest layoffs adds to the mounting evidence of the real-time collapse of American cultural dominance in interactive entertainment." As a result, it has become "painfully clear that, at long last, Fortnite's cultural moment is starting to fade."

American developers now "face a bevy of strategic and economic challenges." Demand for games has diminished since its COVID peak, yet prices to enter the hobby continue to rise, further driving down consumer interest. Van Dreunen argues that while many of those factors are global, some are specific to the US, as much of the burden for the cost of recent tariffs falls on the shoulders of American business and buyers.

He also cites expensive H-1B visa fees, saying that the $100,000 cost of these visas "virtually ensures that publishers will relocate talent elsewhere. It makes the US less competitive and causes it to miss out on tax revenue from high-earning employees." These cost factors mark a notable "contributor to the erosion of American leadership" in the game industry.

Meanwhile, game companies based in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are all finding more success. "Publicly traded game makers in Europe (+60%) and Asia (+26%) have, on average, performed notably better than their American counterparts (+18%) in 2025," van Dreunen says.

"One major contributor now showing its true impact is the encroaching, disproportionate power wielded by platform holders," van Dreunen says. "Over the ten years leading up to 2025, platform revenue, from app stores, console marketplaces, and digital storefronts, jumped from $14 billion to $41 billion, a 191 percent increase. By comparison, game publishers saw their revenue rise from $65 billion to $128 billion, a more modest 98 percent increase. Over the course of a decade, gatekeepers have captured value at nearly twice the rate of content creators."

Epic, of course, fought a protracted, expensive legal battle in an effort to loosen the power wielded by platforms like Apple and Google. "Despite winning several important concessions," van Dreunen says, Epic "has spent a fortune on lawyers and forfeited even more in lost opportunities. Before its removal from the App Store, Fortnite was generating an estimated $1-$2 million per day on iOS, or roughly $500 million annually. Even after Apple's 30 percent cut, that's $375 million in net revenue, every year, gone. Five years later, that totals close to $2 billion."

I have to wonder, though, if the decline of a game like Fortnite is inevitable in itself, regardless of external economic factors. Business doesn't demand profit, which Fortnite does generate at a remarkable rate, it demands growth, which is impossible to sustain in perpetuity. At some point, every live-service game will decline – you'll eventually run out of new players to court, and old players will eventually decide that they've had enough.

Fortnite helped spark a live-service gold rush, and while there have been hits in the space, names like Concord and Highguard litter an increasingly larger graveyard. Even if the American live-service empire is the first to fall, I'm not sure the global game industry can stave off the force of entropy forever.

Fortnite producer says "we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have" amid mass layoffs at Epic Games: "What comes next is very hard and painful."

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has apologized for "not recognizing this terribly painful situation" after a terminally ill employee lost his job in the recent mass layoffs – losing his life insurance in the process – promising that the company "will solve the insurance" for him and his family.

Last week, it was revealed that over 1,000 employees were being laid off from Epic Games, as Sweeney said "I'm sorry we're here again." One of those affected is Michael Prinke, who, according to his LinkedIn, first joined the company in 2019 as a technical writer, before going on to become a programmer writer.

As highlighted on social media, Prinke's wife, Jenni Griffin, took to Facebook shortly after the news, sharing that "what makes this different for our family is that Mike is currently fighting terminal brain cancer." She explained at the time: "Because of the layoff, we didn't just lose income – we lost his life insurance. And because his condition is now considered a pre-existing condition, he can't get new coverage.

"So now, as I face the reality of losing my husband… I'm also facing the reality of what type of funeral/burial I can afford. How I will keep a roof over our heads. How I will protect our son and the life we built together. What will happen to our dogs," she continued. "I truly believe that if the people who made this decision understood the full human impact, they would not have intended this outcome."

Sweeney has now publicly responded to this, stating that Prinke's cancer "was not a factor in this layoff decision," pointing to the confidentiality surrounding medical information.

"Epic is in contact with the family and will solve the insurance for them," he writes on Twitter. "There is high confidentiality around medical information and it was not a factor in this layoff decision. Sorry to everyone for not recognizing this terribly painful situation and handling it in advance."

Griffin's original post has now been updated, too, stating: "WE ARE IN TALKS NOW WITH THE APPROPRIATE PEOPLE! WILL UPDATE SOON, LIKELY BY TUESDAY."

You can find many thoughts around Epic Games recently laying off 1,000 people strewn across the internet, and someone who hasn't minced their words is Chet Faliszek, a former writer at Valve. In an impassioned video, he tears through CEO Tim Sweeney and Epic itself, calling out the scale of the cutbacks and pondering about morale at the corporation.

"Can someone explain this to me, why anybody who works at Epic should work hard?" Faliszek says (spotted by PC Gamer). "'Cause Epic just laid off 1,000 people. And it's gonna shut down Fortnite Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle stage, whatever that is. Who knows?"

It's a fair response. Epic's one of the biggest video game companies in the world. Fortnite is a cultural juggernaut. If, despite all of that, people's jobs are still at risk, what motivation is there to keep pushing?

Faliszek, who was involved in such games as Portal and its sequel, Team Fortress 2, the Half-Life 2 episodes, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, continues. "It's not like they're a publicly traded company," he states. "It's not like there's some need to hit the stock market thing. This is Tim Sweeney. This is Tim. A thousand people is more than [the amount] who work at Valve."

That's a pretty damning comparison, especially as Valve operates Steam, which Faliszek then brings up, albeit indirectly. "Tim has gone from making games to making one game," he says. "Spending all his time doing that and trying to make as much money as possible. And I guess well, hey, Tim, Gabe's better at that than you. I don't know what to tell you, man, because you stopped caring about making things."

He brings up that generally while at work, he's "gonna work my ass off," but then wonders if he'd have that kind of motivation at Epic, or any other major publisher right now. "Would I do that at Epic if they're gonna treat me like that and just have layoffs like that and just act the same way [as EA]?" he ponders. "Like, hey, 'great job, made Battlefield 6, we dethroned Call of Duty: here's a pink slip.'"

Staying on Valve, he points out a considerable amount of devs have been there for years, making great money, and he himself benefited from excellent financial benefits, implying that Epic is doing the opposite when it comes to retaining talent. "I could retire, I worked my ass off at Valve, and I could retire today," he explains. "I made more money than I'll ever make. And the money I made is dwarfed by the people who were there longer than me or before me."

The difference here is, "Valve understood that," Faliszek points out. "That's how you get this thing where people cared, people worked hard, people stayed because they felt they were improving," he continues. "What they were building on was something that they had agency over and owned."

The whole recording is seven-and-a-half minutes long, and it goes around and around like this. Knowing Sweeney, we might get a reply, since he's particularly susceptible to being trolled by Valve. We'll keep our eyes peeled.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says latest layoffs will result in "a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks" because the downsizing "wasn't a performance-based 'rightsizing.'"

A couple of days ago, Epic Games laid off over 1,000 employees, with CEO Tim Sweeney blaming "the downturn in Fortnite engagement" – and now, remaining developers are sharing their own reactions to the mass layoffs.

Fortnite gameplay producer Robby Williams is one such dev, taking to an online thread with his thoughts – and it's admittedly a tough read, considering the situation at hand.

"Hey. End of day and I've had some time to process," he writes. "It's been a brutal day at Epic today, and I'm absolutely devastated by the loss of some of the most insanely bright and talented people I've ever had the honor to work with or even just around."

Williams continues, with a heartfelt message about his former coworkers: "I appreciate the outcry of support and empathy that I've seen from the community today, and I just ask that you please show as much love as you can offer to those that were impacted. None of them deserve this and it's not at all reflective of their work or their impact."

He then alludes to the future – one that won't be easy for the remaining staff at Epic Games.

"What comes next is very hard and painful," the dev admits. "Our teams will have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward, but we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond."

It's especially difficult to gauge, likely, with Sweeney himself having said Fortnite was suffering from a dwindling community. But, as Williams concludes, folks will do what they can now.

"I'll continue to do my best to keep making the best game for you, and I'm confident that my peers feel the same, but please be patient with us as we navigate this tough time and do our best in spite of these truly gut-wrenching losses."

As for what the Epic Games CEO has said, aside from his initial words on the matter, he stated the layoffs will result in "a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks" – which, uh, doesn't exactly help.

According to Sweeney, the company's downsizing "wasn't a performance-based 'rightsizing.'" Regardless, I'd say it stings all the same – and the impact layoffs like this have on the games industry as a whole… isn't great.

Epic Games defends Fortnite's controversial V-Bucks price hike, insisting it's in "direct correlation to the operating costs" and teasing "amazing things" are coming that'll make you "understand what's been going on"

Tim Sweeney wants the world to know that the more than 1,000 workers laid off in the latest Epic Games downsizing are great hires.

This week, Epic let go of more than 1,000 employees, with Sweeney blaming a "downturn in Fortnite engagement" as well as "industry-wide challenges" and factors "unique to Epic" in a letter to staff. Today, he's encouraging employers and recruiters to keep an eye out for resumes coming from the talented people he no longer employs.

"In the coming days, employers will see a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks," reads a tweet from Sweeney, insisting that the company's latest layoffs had nothing to do with employee performance.

"An important thing to understand is that Epic never lowered our hiring standards as we grew, and the layoff wasn't a performance-based 'rightsizing' as companies call it nowadays. It's a sound bet that anyone with Epic Games on their resume is in the top few percent of their discipline."

Of course, Sweeney offering sweeping referrals for his former employees is a nice gesture, but it's a dubious compliment in the wake of one of the most brutal layoffs in recent months. The move also resulted in the deaths of three Fortnite game modes: Ballistic, Festival Battle Stage, and Rocket Racing, the latter of which was a key driver in Epic's original push toward a multi-game metaverse.

It's also worth noting that, as more and more developers lose their jobs, the pool of qualified applicants grows larger, making the scarcity of available jobs even tougher. Sweeney's words aren't meaningless, but they're statistically less likely to result in an applicant's success than they were, say, before Epic laid off 1,000 more employees.

Fortnite art lead behind iconic characters like Jonesy has been laid off by Epic Games, and fellow devs are paying tribute: "Fortnite looks like Fortnite because of you."

Yesterday, it was announced that Fortnite developer Epic Games is laying off over 1,000 employees, and it's now come to light that one of those affected is the character art director who created the model for Jonesy, easily the most iconic and recognizable character in the battle royale.

Vitaliy Naymushin has worked at Epic Games for over 11 years, and you need only look at his Artstation page to see what an impact he's had on Fortnite, with models for notable characters like Ramirez and a "female constructor" we'd later know as Penny. Most importantly, shared in July 2017, is the "the Male Soldier model I created for Fortnite" – Jonesy – based on concept art by principal concept artist Ben Shafer.

Per his LinkedIn page, dating back to 2015 when he was a senior character artist, Naymushin "established the 3d style for Fortnite characters," and "created majority of the original cast of characters (Jonesy, Ramirez, Penny etc)," but now, he's looking for work.

"Well this is weird," he begins on LinkedIn. "After 11 years I find that I no longer work at Epic. It's been a wild ride, lots of ups and downs. Seeing Fortnite from pre launch to today and being a part of making that happen was an experience of a lifetime."

He acknowledges that there are "lots of similar posts out there" from other affected employees, adding: "I hope that everyone impacted by the layoff lands on their feet." Naymushin extends his wishes to those still working at the company, too: "Best of luck to all the folks remaining at Epic."

Fellow Epic Games devs have been wishing Naymushin well, too. "Fortnite looks like Fortnite because of you Vitaliy," comments creative cinematic director Gavin Moran, who's "sorry to hear" that the art lead is "no longer at Epic."

"It's been so awesome to work with you," writes aforementioned Jonesy concept artist Shafer. "I can't believe you got swept up in this. You were like the glue for our team. Appreciate you man and you will be missed big time! Thanks for everything."

"You're an amazing leader and truly a legend to the games industry," says Epic art director Dakota Sager-Leonard. "I'm so sorry you were affected. Wishing you all the best moving forward, you've made a huge impact to Fortnite and I know you will continue to do incredible things wherever you go."

Epic kills 3 Fortnite modes amid mass layoffs, including the Rocket League devs' Mario Kart-like which helped kick off the multi-game metaverse era to begin with.

Today, Epic announced that it's laying off more than 1,000 employees. Alongside that news, the studio also revealed that it's ceasing support for three Fortnite game modes in 2026: Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage. Rocket Racing is particularly notable, since it was one of the key pillars of Epic's original push into a multi-game metaverse.

"We've built a lot of Fortnite modes, and in some cases we failed to build something awesome enough to attract and retain a large player base," the company says in its announcement, adding that it's "grateful for everyone who played."

Rocket Racing will go offline in October 2026. This mode, created by the Epic-owned Rocket League studio Psyonix, is an arcade racing game that blends Rocket League's high-flying cars with a competitive Mario Kart sensibility. It seemed like the obvious highlight when Epic first unveiled Fortnite's multi-game future back in 2023, but that wasn't reflected in the player counts, which quickly dwindled in comparison to other modes and user-created options.

One of the other key pillars of that 2023 launch was Fortnite Festival. While Epic says "music remains a major part of Fortnite" and the mode as a whole will continue to get updates, the PvP Festival Battle Stage is going offline as of April 16, 2026.

And there's another mode dying on April 16: Ballistic. This is a 5v5 FPS that transplants Counter-Strike's ultra-competitive vibes into the Fortnite ecosystem, and this shutdown seems to be the one the community is taking the hardest. You can just look at the comments under Epic's announcement to see the community's outcry – many believed Ballistic could have had a robust future with more support from the devs.

But with 1,000 fewer people at Epic, it's unclear what the future of modes outside of the core Fortnite ecosystem will ultimately be. Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney blamed a "downturn in Fortnite engagement" for the layoffs, although he stopped short of detailing steps the company is taking to realign the battle royale.

Speaking more broadly, Sweeney had this to say about the future of Fortnite: "What we now need to do is clear: build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events."

Epic Games defends Fortnite's controversial V-Bucks price hike, insisting it's in "direct correlation to the operating costs" and teasing "amazing things" are coming that'll make you "understand what's been going on."

Epic Games, the multi-billion dollar corporation behind Fortnite and one of the most successful games in the world, is laying off more than 1,000 employees. CEO Tim Sweeney blames a "downturn in Fortnite engagement" for the move, which he attributes to both "industry-wide challenges" and factors "unique to Epic."

"Today we’re laying off over 1000 Epic employees," Sweeney says in a memo to the company, which was also shared with the public. "I'm sorry we're here again. The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles puts us in a more stable place."

The news follows a notable price hike for V-Bucks a few weeks ago, which Epic framed as a way for players to "help pay the bills" for the mega-popular battle royale. Clearly, the publisher figures those bills are still too high.

Epic last laid off 830 people in 2023, which represented around 16% of its workforce at the time. On today's cuts, Sweeney says affected employees "will receive a severance package that includes at least four months of base pay, with more based on tenure. We’re also extending Epic-paid healthcare coverage. For example, in the U.S., they’ll receive paid coverage for 6 months. We’ll also accelerate their stock options vesting through January 2027 and extend equity exercise options for up to two years."

As Circana senior director Mat Piscatella was quick to note on Bluesky, Fortnite was played by 35% of PlayStation players and 31% of Xbox players in the US through February 2026. That made it the biggest game on both platforms for the month. But the engagement downturn is real: "The avg PS player engaged with Fortnite for 16 hours in the month (vs 21 last Feb), with Xbox players averaging 15 hours (vs 19 last Feb)," Piscatella says.

According to Circana's Player Engagement Tracker, Fortnite led in US Feb Monthly Active Users across both PlayStation (35% of actives playing) and Xbox (31%). The avg PS player engaged with Fortnite for 16 hours in the month (vs 21 last Feb), with Xbox players averaging 15 hours (vs 19 last Feb).

— @matpiscatella.bsky.social (@matpiscatella.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-03-24T15:08:37.371Z

Sweeney says that "some of the challenges we're facing are industry-wide challenges: slower growth, weaker spending, and tougher cost economics; current consoles selling less than last generation's; and games competing for time against other increasingly-engaging forms of entertainment."

He acknowledges that Fortnite remains "one of the most successful games in the world," but says the company has "had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season," and is still in the "early stages of returning to mobile." He also says that "being the industry's vanguard we have taken a lot of bullets in a battle which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers."

Sweeney's not specific about what those bullets are, but it's tough to imagine he's referring to anything other than the company's ongoing battles with entrenched digital storefronts, which has seen Epic go to court with Google and Apple while attempting to wrest a sliver of Valve's PC gaming pie.

"Since it's a thing now, I should note that the layoffs aren't related to AI," Sweeney also acknowledges. "To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can."

Epic Games defends Fortnite's controversial V-Bucks price hike, insisting it's in "direct correlation to the operating costs" and teasing "amazing things" are coming that'll make you "understand what's been going on."

In a peak crossover, friendslop climbing hit Peak now has skins in Fortnite. But before you decide to make your character an orange, round-headed boyscout, you should know the price is almost three times a copy of the multiplayer game.

No, seriously, it's all in the V-Bucks. A Twitter user did the math: The Peak Scout skin will run you 2,000 of Fortnite's fictitious currency. That's $22.40, by the current rate for V-Bucks, or 2.8 whole copies of Peak on Steam, which costs $7.99 as standard. The easiest option for buying it is actually slightly more expensive, as there's a 2,400 V-Bucks pack available for $22.99.

If this skin became available before the recent mark up on virtual dollars in Fortnite, then it'd cost $17.80. That's only 2.2 copies of Peak, something I'm sure we can agree is a much less egregious proposition. Capitalism!

Epic Games recently revealed that Fortnite was going to become a bit more expensive, introducing the first mark up in several years. In-game currency is pricier across the board, something the company maintains is necessary for the planned expansion of the already mammoth shooter in the months and years ahead.

While this is all to be expected in an age of industry instability and increased emphasis on games being live-service, it doesn't make seeing it spelled out any easier. It's amazing that a game like Peak is being exposed to so many people through Fortnite, but seeing the price, and knowing that Aggro Crab and Landfall won't be seeing any of it, definitely makes it bittersweet.

"That's actually a slap in the face to the Peak developers," says one response on Twitter. "Like: 'Hey, we at Fortnite feel our skin of your character is worth well over double the price of your fuck ass game.'"

That said, I'm kind of here for Scout beaming Goku across the island. It's all about the nonsense idiosyncrasies, really. Peak.

Baldur's Gate 3 writer says the RPG's reputation system exists because Larian can't just let players "break" party members: "We would be working on the game forever"

Developer Aggro Crab is turning friendslop into friendwine and joining Fortnite for a Peak bundle no one expected.

"PEAK IS COMING TO FORTNITE ON MARCH 21st," Aggro Crab announces alongside a teaser on YouTube, which shows off the suddenly incredible length of the Peak characters' legs… and a concerning lack of divorced plushie Bing Bong.

One YouTube comment with nearly 2,000 likes says, "If there is no Bing Bong back bling, we're rioting."

"Give us a BingBong backpack and my life is yours !" promises another fan. But try not to make any promises yet – Aggro Crab clearly anticipated players' sick need to trade their souls for Bing Bong long ago. They remind fans on Twitter that they created a mockup of Bing Bong the Fortnite pickaxe back in 2025, after one of the battle royale's major leakers FireMonkey observed a friendslop buffet: "Only in Fortnite can you wear the REPO Semibot Skin with an Among Us on your back while holding the Stop Sign from Lethal Company."

Fortnite developers "had a better vision" than theirs for Bing Bong, Aggro Crab now says. On YouTube, they respond to that first popular comment on the topic and provide what may be a back bling tease, saying, "I can't snitch, but you'll find out March 21."

The Peak developers are more forthcoming about, as they write in another YouTube comment, their shockingly "LONG" new Scouts. To fit Fortnite player models as skins, Peak's Scouts have apparently undergone painful leg lengthening surgery, and they look huge.

"That's crazy," summarizes another fan comment. "I'm immediately buying that."

Peak co-creator loves the term friendslop, because "what's so bad about hanging out with your friends and playing games like this?"

Epic Games lead producer Jean Pierre Kellams maintains that, had you not known NVIDIA's new rendering model DLSS 5 was powered by AI, you would collapse from the euphoria of seeing Resident Evil Requiem's Grace Ashcroft look like her skin was made out of other people's skin.

"I know everyone is looking at faces, but look at the leather jacket. Look at the correct lighting on the neck," Kellams argues in a series of Twitter posts discussing NVIDIA's applying DLSS 5 to Grace, who I believe has suffered enough. "This is awesome," he says.

Many other people, including me, do not think DLSS 5 is awesome, because the AI rendering seems to inject pork fat into characters to simulate what a "beautiful human woman" looks like. And I'm afraid of someone doing that to me in my sleep. But Kellams says in another Twitter post, "All you guys roasting DLSS 5 like it doesn't look better/is detracting from art direction are absolutely insane."

"The lighting and shading improvements are bonkers," he continues. "If that was shown as a next-gen hardware reveal and not 'AI,' you guys would be going nuts." The producer compares some people's disappointment with DLSS 5 to how "it was painful when candlemakers were put out of business by Edison."

Kellams could have a point there. If I really don't think about it, it's true that Grace's "chin is slightly lighter," and her "eye socket is now accurately casting a shadow," as Kellams points out, and that these facts are equivalent to the advent of electricity. Wait, no, they're not. Sorry, I think I was just operated on by DLSS 5.

AI making something to GTA 6's scale is "laughable," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says, but the tech isn't as awful as you think: "I don't believe machines have the ability to be good or evil."

Fortnite developer and publisher Epic Games has caused waves among fans after revealing plans to raise the price of V-Bucks and leave optional purchases like the Battle Pass with far less value – but the creators stand strong behind their decision to increase the pricing.

Andrea Balta, senior director of ecosystem growth at Epic Games, speaks on the matter in a new online post, replying directly to a disappointed player.

"Seeing comments like 'the Item Shop is the main focus instead of the game' hits me really hard," writes Balta. "It's not the impression we want to give, nor how we focus our efforts. We put a ton of work and care into Fortnite's gameplay, and this focus is only growing."

The dev then concludes, "Paying the bills frees up our teams to continue driving stories and building stuff you love." Unsurprisingly, fans aren't exactly convinced – in fact, many seem angry.

"Oh, I feel sooooooooo sorry that your poor little billion-dollar megacorporation can't afford to keep the lights on," reads one reply. "You must be struggling to feed your families with those 10 billion dollars you made last year. Should we start a charity fund?"

It's an especially charged response, all things considered, but the community seems distraught all around. A separate thread outlining how "the Battle Pass will now cost 800 V-Bucks and award 800 V-Bucks for completing it" instead of 1,500 with bonus rewards included shows as much.

One person asks, "Why they acting like they're poor and in desperate need of money?" Another adds, "This is genuinely one of the worst changes they've done."

Elsewhere, somebody argues in their own post that, "Epic posted this at the WORST possible time, right as so many people were leaving the game, bored of the season, right at a low point anyway, they decided to drop a real bomb and make everything so much worse. It's almost as if they're trying to kill off the game at this point."

Comments see folks agree, with a person dubbing the price increase a "diabolical fumble this season."

Another player replies directly to the sentiment that Epic somehow needs help "paying the bills," exclaiming, "'Help pay the bills'" – MAN FUCK UR BILLS WHAT ABOUT OURS?"

It's certainly not looking good in the Fortnite fandom right now, that's for sure, and people aren't sure how this will work out when the next season starts. As one user says, "Doing this just BEFORE a new season is CRAZY. All your good faith is already gone."

Here's hoping Epic Games listens to its community and considers some changes – changes that don't see prices increasing anymore, that is. It's evident players aren't satisfied with how things are turning out now, even if the devs argue it's necessary.

Searching for something else to play other than Fortnite right now? Be sure to browse our roundup of the best Battle Royale games out there.

You know, even extremely profitable companies are struggling in the current economy. Just think of poor Epic Games, faced with the prospect of continuing to run one of the most financially successful games in the world. What choice does it have but to ask Fortnite players to pony up their fair share, shouldering the burden through increased V-Bucks prices and less valuable Battle Passes?

"The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we’re raising prices to help pay the bills," Epic says in its announcement. I'm not sure playing the economy card is going to resonate much with Fortnite players, given that the company was valued at $22.5 billion when Disney invested in it in 2024.

Whatever the reasons why, V-Bucks are getting more expensive as of March 19. The most basic pack, priced at $8.99, used to get you 1,000 V-Bucks, but will now offer only 800. You'll still at least get 20% back through Epic Rewards if you make your purchases through the Epic Games Store or the company's mobile and web payment system.

Here's how the new prices shake out (Epic has only confirmed what the changes look like in USD):

• $8.99 Pack – previously 1,000 V-Bucks, now 800
• $22.99 Pack – previously 2,800 V-Bucks, now 2,400
• $36.99 Pack – previously 5,000 V-Bucks, now 4,500
• $89.99 Pack – previously 13,500 V-Bucks, now 12,500
• Exact Amount Pack – previously ~$0.50 for 50 V-Bucks, now ~$0.99

Regular Battle Passes are going down from 1,000 V-Bucks, and will instead cost 800 V-Bucks going forward, but they'll also offer less value. You'll be able to earn 800 V-Bucks from progression, still enough to purchase the next pass, but there will no longer be any V-Bucks-based bonus rewards (you could previously get a maximum of 1,500 V-Bucks back from a Battle Pass if you got all of the currency in the bonus rewards, too).

Meanwhile, other passes are also decreasing in price. When the next OG Pass lands, it'll cost 800 V-Bucks, down from 1,000. The Music Pass and Lego Pass are similarly going from 1,400 to 1,200 V-Bucks next go-round.

And yes, this all affects Fortnite Crew subscriptions, too. Instead of 1,000 V-Bucks, the subscription will now net you just 800 per month. You certainly shouldn't expect Item Shop prices to get any cheaper here, either – after all, Epic Games has clearly fallen on hard times, just like the rest of us. So relatable.

Fortnite nonetheless remains one of the best battle royale games you can play today.

Who needs Kingdom Hearts 4 when we have a potential Fortnite collaboration, am I right? Square Enix and Disney's ongoing action-RPG franchise is making its way to Epic's sandbox, per a prominent leaker, while news on Sora's next full-scale adventure remains scant.

According to Adira, a Twitter account that's been responsible for a number of leaks of late, says that Keyblades are incoming. They state the collab is "in development" and will arrive in the coming months, with no further details.

This is the second time Kingdom Hearts and Fortnite have been mentioned in the same breath, with another leaker claiming the two were going to collaborate two years ago. That rumor turned out to be untrue, and it's always worth taking these claims with a pinch of salt, but this partnership is certainly believable.

For one thing, Fortnite's been absolutely gunning through major properties for the last while. The Simpsons, South Park, and Kill Bill are just three recent examples of the pieces of media that have been absorbed into the battle royale's tapestry. Secondly, Disney and Epic Games have been working more closely together of late.

We've already seen Marvel and Star Wars get ample space in Fortnite. It seems practically inevitable that Kingdom Hearts would eventually join them in some capacity. There have been intermittent rumors of Final Fantasy becoming part of the shooter, too, but those haven't borne fruit yet. Should this happen, I'd expect that to change sharpish.

In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if we see Sora, Riku, or Kairi beaming players across the island before 2026 is done. Maybe that's the Kingdom Hearts 4 we deserve.

"I have zero news" about Kingdom Hearts 4, Kairi actor clarifies after fans were convinced they might have revealed a spoiler for the upcoming RPG: "I totally understand the confusion."

Good luck is here for the Grammy-winning pop star, as Epic has revealed the Fortnite Chappell Roan collab she's been asking for since last year.

Roan, a noted Fortnite enthusiast who shot to stardom in 2024 for reasons entirely unrelated to Fortnite, made a public plea in an interview with BBC Radio 1 in 2025, begging Epic to "please give me a skin, please." Today, Epic announced that Roan is getting that and much more.

"Chappell Roan is the Fortnite Festival Season 13 Icon," reads the announcement. Fortnite Festival players can expect season 13 to be Chappell-themed, with the main stage taking on a medieval castle-look inspired by the singer's Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things tour design. Naturally, hit songs from Roan like 'Hot To Go!,' 'Pink Pony Club,' and 'Good Luck, Babe!' will be some of the season's new jam tracks.

However, for regular Fortnite Battle Royale players, this news simply means we're getting Chappell Roan skins, emotes, back blings, all that jazz. Specifically, the Roan of Arc outfit, pictured above, and the aptly named Chappell Roan outfit, will be added to Fortnite's in-game store on February 5, with the launch of Fortnite Festival season 13. You'll also find the adorable Pink Pony sidekick in the store alongside the Pink Pony Club and Femininomenon emotes.

Rounding out the collab are rewards you'll be able to unlock through the season 13 Heartcore music pass, including the Pink Pony Star back bling, Midwest Princess keytar, Subway Serenader mic and Drumset Supernova. All references I 100% understand because I'm super young, hip, and cool. None of that is true, but I'm happy for Chappell and her fans.

Epic Games Store GM says Valve's Team Fortress hats "definitely inspired" Epic's new Fortnite crossovers, like getting a Crimson Desert skin when you buy a game through Epic

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has, in the past, opposed the AI disclosure tags that appear on relevant Steam listings because he's sure it harms "small developers." But Epic Games Store VP and GM Steve Allison takes a softer, though similar, stance in a new interview with GamesRadar+, telling us the storefront's position on AI-generated content isn't really up to its executives – it's up to you.

After GamesRadar+ asked Allison to clarify the Epic Games Store's stance on AI, he tells us, "We do not police how developers make their games," and that includes whether or not they choose to use AI.

Echoing boss Sweeney, Allison adds that if AI "helps a small team punch above their weight class, I don't personally view it through the same lens as some people do." Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead writer Daniel Vávra shared a similar sentiment on Twitter in 2025, maintaining that, while generative AI might trigger "the demise of humanity," it could at least "help me make an epic game in a year with a smaller team like in the old days."

Allison isn't making any grand assumptions, however. He tells GamesRadar+, "We don't take a positive or negative stance on it. We're kind of neutral there."

It's you who should figure out whether or not to be neutral, apparently. Allison continues, "We let players decide. We let developers decide how they're going to communicate with their players."

"My goal on PC isn't to topple Steam": Epic Games Store boss says beating Valve isn't the plan – just getting "enough market share on PC that you have to be here no matter what."

Whenever a game is given away for free on the Epic Games Store, concurrent players of that game's Steam version increase by an average of 40%, according to Epic itself.

This is a standout figure in Epic's 2025 year-in-review report, which reflects on the results and direction of its still-developing storefront. You might think it signals that a chunk of people would rather pay for a game on Steam than get it for free on Epic, and for some people, I'm sure that's true – but there is more to the math.

"In 2025, players claimed 662 million titles through the program," the report reads. "Over 77% of games set an all-time peak CCU record on the Store during the week of their free offer. This delivered a measurable halo effect across the broader PC ecosystem, including a 40% lift in Steam CCU while the title was free on the Epic Games Store."

Epic Games Store VP and GM Steve Allison, speaking with GamesRadar+ ahead of the report's release, adds some context to this number. Asked what this data tells us and whether it's good news for Epic, Allison maintains "it's a good thing." (He also clarifies that the 40% figure refers to average Steam CCU lift.)

"When you look at that, if you look at the coverage that comes with it, tons of coverage happens on the free games," he says. "It's a pretty significant amount of coverage. It means there's a lot of conversation happening around those games at the same time. Those games may be being purchased, it may just be people going to their library, maybe they have it in their library and hadn't played it before.

"I don't have any goals of hoarding all the positive outcomes," he concludes. "If we do a free game offer and it hits record CCU here and Steam, more players have it in their library, some players buy it. I think it's a positive halo effect for everybody. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a good thing."

Epic Games Store vice president and general manager Steve Allison says he isn't trying to "topple Steam," nor is Epic's store a PC-only destination. Rather, on PC, he wants Epic to have enough users that developers "have to be here."

GamesRadar+ spoke to Allison ahead of the reveal of the 2025 Epic Games Store year-in-review report. The report notes a 57% rise in third-party PC games spending on the storefront, but a 14% decline in total gameplay hours and a 1% decline in monthly active users (2% drop in daily). 662 million free games were claimed, and there are promises of an infrastructure overhaul improving load times as well as feature updates to come.

Asked if the end goal of the Epic Games Store is to beat Steam as a PC gaming destination, or if it's closer to new GOG owner Michał Kiciński's vision of coexisting in a sustainable niche, Allison leans toward the latter.

"First of all, I agree with Michał [Kiciński's] statement on that stuff," he begins. "We look at it the same way. If you look at what we said when we launched the store in 2018, we always said we expect to expand to mobile. We couldn't get to it for good reason for some time, but our differentiation is going to be a multiplatform games-first ecosystem across PC and mobile. So I'm excited that we're finally getting there and starting to connect the dots. But my goal on PC isn't to topple Steam.

"I'm really proud of what we've done here. If you look back at where we were in 2018, Steam had about 67 [million] monthly users on it on average. We were at zero. Today, we're at about 67 to 68 million monthly active users on average, and Steam has grown to like 140 million monthly active users. Our competition in the space has pushed PC gaming to pretty impressive growth overall and that's, I think I would say, and [Epic CEO] Tim [Sweeney] would say, pretty awesome."

(It's unclear when in 2018 Allison was referring to, but for clarity, in a January 2019 blog post, Valve said Steam had 90 million monthly active users, with 47 million daily active users.)

The Epic Games App came to iOS in December and Android in January, giving Epic's store a dedicated mobile companion. In the past year, games on both mobile and PC, like Wuthering Waves, Genshin Impact, and Honkai: Star Rail, have become a large part of the store's third-party presence, with all three of these ranking in the store's top five "Mythic" games in the yearly review. Allison is keen on growing in the mobile space, but also wants a significant presence on PC.

"I would say our goal is to have enough market share on PC that you have to be here no matter what you do," he says. "That, from my perspective, is a predictable average market share of 25 or 30% of your sales or more. And if we do that, we will be multiple billions of dollars on third-party games, and Steam just depends on how much [sharing] happens there.

"What I will tell you is that 60% of our players are what I call dual users. They use both the Epic Games Store and Steam. Obviously we have a bunch of users come in and grab free games, but they also buy, because of Epic Rewards or regional pricing or great deals. And the goal is, let's give players more reasons than that. Because they only buy 1.2 to 1.4 games per year. For those players, it's not really a question of if they're going to buy a game, it's where. So wherever we have the same game available at the same time, we need to make sure we're giving them every reason to think about buying it here. So the Fortnite crossovers, the player-facing features, all that stuff's super critical to get out the door on that front."

As part of its yearly report, Epic announced that multiple games – including releases from Capcom, Genshin Impact maker miHoYo, Crimson Desert studio Pearl Abyss, Phantom Blade Zero dev S-Game, Mintrocket, and Kakao Games – will see exclusive Fortnite cosmetic deals through the Epic Games Store. If you buy specific games through Epic, you'll get a special cosmetic in Fortnite. "Developers have been asking us to tap into Fortnite," Allison says, and this is a new way of doing so while pushing the Epic Games Store.

I asked Allison how he wants the Epic Games Store to be different from Steam, noting existing differences like a more favorable revenue split (88/12 to Steam's 70/30 baseline).

"To the same point as the GOG founder, we really want to show the world what we've been running at," he says, "which is really this connected, multiplatform store ecosystem that brings more players together. As you may know, Tim's a big believer in networking effects and Metcalfe's law. And when we enjoin all these players where they can kind of interact with each other across these ecosystems and the games that they're playing, we think it's going to be a profoundly different thing.

"As we start to finally get to the player-facing work, we get to kick that off fresh. We get to look at what's in the market. It's not just what's on Steam, it's what's on consoles, and even to invent new ways of doing things. These features will have a 2025, 2026 and on viewpoint, and in some cases, on legacy platforms, you don't get to turn those things over very often. So I'm pretty excited about the social framework as we start to evolve that. I'm excited about all the other features we're going to ship, because we're taking that view of how the work is going to go forward."

Epic says only 16 to 18% of people claiming free games on the Epic Games Store buy games there afterwards, but "for cost per new user, it's hard to beat."

The Epic Games Store gave out 662 million copies of free games in 2025, adding up to $2,136 worth "in total value per player," according to the company's new year in review report.

These 100 free games averaged a 78% "score," the report reads, though it's a little unclear how that score was determined.

Speaking with GamesRadar+, Epic Games Store VP and GM Steve Allison says that "for every new player that we acquire through the free games program, they convert at 16 to 18%" into paying users.

"That's a relatively good conversion for the scale coming through the door, and in many cases it's much more than that, in the mid 20s and in some cases the 30s," he says.

Can and will Epic keep giving away games at this rate? "I don't see why not," Allison says. "Our budget kind of hovers around the $20 million mark, but it can go up or down based on opportunity. But generally we view that as our marketing budget.

"It's pretty profound, the impact on new users every year. Somewhere between 7 and 12 million come through that program every year. For cost per new user, it's hard to beat. It has a profound effect on retention and having players in the ecosystem at times where we have other things going on. So I expect us to continue. We may alter the cadence of the program at some point in the future, but from my perspective, I don't see a change."

During a presentation earlier in our call, Allison says "the free games program has been awesome for us. It's awesome for our players, it's a really important part of our initial scaling, and continues to be a good path for user acquisition."

Separately, on the subject of appealing to both players and developers, he adds: "It's 50/50. We've really biased on the developer side. We've given players good reasons to at least patronize us with the free games, and it's been pretty impressive. It's scaled faster than any of us expected. But you have to win on both fronts. If you get all the developers on board and don't have any players, they're not going to make any sales and you won't get all the developers. And if you get all the players here and you don't have the games, you're not going to reach your goals either."

"My goal on PC isn't to topple Steam": Epic Games Store boss says beating Valve isn't the plan – just getting "enough market share on PC that you have to be here no matter what."

Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison says the new batch of gift-with-purchase Fortnite collabs are inspired by Team Fortress 2.

Epic Games has previously offered goodies in Fortnite with the purchase of games on its store – most notably, in 2023, those who purchased Alan Wake 2 on the Epic Games Store received the man himself in Fortnite. However, Epic's gifting efforts seem to be ramping up in 2026, and players can already anticipate a Resident Evil: Requiem collaboration (giving players a Grace Ashcroft skin) and a Crimson Desert collaboration (giving players a Kliff skin).

Posting about the Kliff skin on Twitter, Allison says, "This is among the first of many Fortnite crossovers led by the Epic Games Store team granted as a with gift with purchase," a campaign that "will scale to over 100 partnerships per year." He explains, "This program was conceived to help developers sell more games."

However, in a reply, one user noted the similarity between this series of Fortnite collabs and what Valve used to do with Team Fortress 2. Steam used to offer incentives for purchasing games like Alien Isolation, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and Sleeping Dogs – while others titles like Telltale's Poker Night at the Inventory duology gifted items upon completing tasks in the game.

Allison admitted that this was "definitely inspired by exactly that," thanks to his own experience on the other side of the Team Fortress 2 deal. He explains, "when I was at Telltale Games we did TF hats as a gift with purchase every chance we could as it would always put our games in the top 5 sellers for a good 1-2 weeks," and this experience seems to have motivated Epic to try out a similar experiment with Fortnite. He says, "We tested this a lot late in 2025 and the lifts to partners sales were impressive and just like what we experienced then back in the day."

Epic's gifting efforts should hopefully be a win-win, theoretically boosting sales of partners' games so Fortnite players can get some new loot. And, for Epic, it may inspire some players to pick up a major third-party release like Resident Evil Requiem on the somewhat stigmatized Epic Games Store.

The Fortnite x South Park collab has me yearning for a canceled GTA-inspired game from 2005

Epic Games and Fortnite CEO Tim Sweeney, as you might be able to guess, is in favor of the £656 million (about $900 million based on current conversion rates) lawsuit against Valve that was recently approved by the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal.

The gist of the lawsuit, brought forward by self-proclaimed digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt, is that Valve's policies and position as the leading distribution service in PC gaming means publishers are effectively blocked from selling games and add-ons at lower prices on competing stores. The suit also seeks a payout for millions of UK gamers who might have overpaid £22 to £44 for games since 2018. The finer details get really messy, especially as Valve countered that Steam key resellers do allow for transactions outside of its own platform, so you should probably read our full breakdown.

As Steam's loudest competitor, Epic Games Store boss Tim Sweeney didn't pass up the opportunity to give his two cents on the situation. "Steam’s rules do explicitly prohibit games from steering players to competing purchase methods, forcing everyone to pay 30% to Valve," he recently tweeted. "Apple and Google did the same until the court explicitly found this practice to be unlawful. Now they don't!"

It's not clear exactly what rule Sweeney's referring to here, but Steam's own guidelines state that "it's OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time." Though Valve would also prefer that developers "don't give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam key purchasers."

"Today, in the USA, developers are free to steer users of iOS and Android apps to competing purchase methods. Apple and Google collect 0% on those transactions. On computers and smartphones, Valve is the only major store still holding onto the payments tie and 30% junk fee," he continued. "A store can charge a fee for selling a product. What the court found is: after you've bought a game, the store can't force all in-game commerce between you and the developer to go through them with 30% junk fees. It's like a car dealership demanding 30% of gas purchases."

In a follow-up comment, Sweeney gets a little more specific, claiming that almost all stores allow for games to redirect players toward an off-store website for transactions, but what Steam doesn't allow "is the developer selling you stuff directly from the app using their own payment screens or their own website." Several commentors debunked the claim, pointing to various examples of Steam games that do in fact have their own payment screens.

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney doubles down on his critique of Steam's AI disclosures: "I just hate to see Valve confiscate ever more opportunity from small developers…"

Alan Wake 2 studio Remedy is slapping Larian publishing lead Michael Douse on the wrist, while Douse is slapping Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney on the wrist, while Sweeney is patting himself on the back for prioritizing good deals for gamers.

That's a lot of flapping around, so let's take it step-by-step. Earlier this week, Sweeney made a post on Bluesky responding to claims that giveaways on the Epic Games Store result in more Steam purchases, saying, "gamers and developers win by having more options and better deals." Douse then reacted to Sweeney's apparently blithe philosophy, saying, "this altruistic pro-developer talk doesn't sit well when Remedy seemingly went into financial crisis because they couldn't tap Steam for AW2 sales suffering potentially hundreds of millions in lost revenue." Now, Remedy itself has something to say.

"Hi," the official Remedy account begins on Bluesky. "There would be no Alan Wake 2 without Epic Publishing. The publishing deal with Epic was very fair to Remedy."

The developer continues, "While these complex deals can often take even a year to reach their conclusion, and may not always be fair to the developer, this one was. And it only took months to get done. Epic Games was, and is, an excellent partner to us. Steam or no Steam."

In October, Remedy's CEO Tero Virtala volunteered to leave the position after nearly 10 years following shooter FBC: Firebreak's underwhelming sales.

Baldur's Gate 3 publishing lead says Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney's "altruistic pro-developer talk" over the Steam vs Epic debate "doesn't sit well" after Alan Wake 2 studio "seemingly went into financial crisis."

Pocketpair's head of publishing and communications, John 'Bucky' Buckley, is shooting his shot to get a potential Fortnite crossover in motion.

Fortnite has crossed over with everything at this point, it feels like. South Park and SpongeBob SquarePants arrived in the game recently, and the rumor mill is saying the likes of Ed, Edd, n Eddy, The Office, and Regular Show are on the way. Basically, nothing seems to be off limits, even if it does not fit the vibes at all. And naturally, getting something into Fortnite can get more eyes on the source material, given how massive the player base is.

Robby Williams – gameplay producer on Fortnite, not the Take That singer turned CGI monkey – recently took to Twitter saying he's been getting back into Palworld. He explains, "I'm still kinda taken aback by how smart the design is if you like both creature collecting and base-building/optimization games." He adds, "I think Palworld has a really excellent gameplay loop around how the Pals play into improving production rates across the various base resources."

Bucky took note of this, quoting the Tweet, from Williams, saying, "Survival games aren't for everyone, but we're really glad Palworld is resonating with people!" After thanking Williams, Bucky had to shoot his shot: "If you ever want to put Palworld in Fortnite just reach out hehe."

Williams was also asked by a user if Fortnite will ever have a game mode similar to Palworld, to which he says: "I'd love to see something like that some day! I think the different approaches taken by games like Pokemon and Palworld are super interesting, so it's fun to think about what a Fortnite version of a creature collector would look like!"

Fortnite already has a whole bunch of different game modes separate from its main battle royale action, so who knows what the future could hold? It's clear that Pocketpair would be up for the official crossover if Epic ever comes knocking on its door, though.

Fortnite now allows in-game purchases in user-generated Creative maps, including for randomized items

Tim Sweeney's been talking up the value of the Epic Games Store as competition for Steam again, pointing out how good it is for both players and developers. This time, his comments are being challenged by a lead developer at Larian Studios, the team behind Baldur's Gate 3 and the Divinity series, who believes some context is missing.

"I understand Epic entirely funded Alan Wake 2 but this altruistic pro-developer talk doesn't sit well when Remedy seemingly went into financial crisis because they couldn't tap Steam for AW2 sales suffering potentially hundreds of millions in lost revenue," Michael Douse, the publishing director at Larian, says on Twitter.

He's quote-tweeting Sweeney, who is commenting on stats from publisher New Blood showing that taking part in Epic's giveaways increased Steam sales. "On some transactions, Epic wins. On more, Steam wins," the Epic Games CEO tweeted. "But one thing is constant on every transaction: gamers and developers win by having more options and better deals."

Douse adds it's "difficult" to take these comments at face value, knowing some games have underperformed overall due to exclusivity. He's unsure if the Epic Games Store as a platform is bringing in customers and converting them into solid revenue for studios in a way that’s worthwhile.

"Ultimately the viability of the store sits on their ability to convert hundreds of millions of Fortnite players into mid-hardcore premium gamers," he says, "and I don't see the Fortnite brand attempting to do that."

In the case of Alan Wake 2, although Epic helped front the cost in a publishing deal, it did take almost two years for the sequel to safely turn a profit for Remedy. Steam and the Nintendo Switch are the only two stores it didn't come out on, and either would've definitely made the accounting on the project easier.

Options are always good, doubly so in an industry as unpredictable as this one. But it's crucial teams are aware of what they're getting into whatever path they take, because it's sales that'll keep the lights on, first and foremost.

Steam will always dominate over the Epic Games Store because people don't want to "cheat on [their] home library with some other shop," says Witchfire lead

Update: Epic Games reached out to clarify certain restrictions already in place regarding paid random items in Creative mode maps. Per information outlined on its In Island Transactions Restrictions page, "as required by local law, Paid Random Items are restricted" in Singapore, Australia, Qatar, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom (for players under 18), and Brazil (for players under 18, effective March 2026).

Original story:

Fortnite is now allowing devs behind user-generated Creative mode maps to sell their own in-game purchases, opening the door for even more spending, now even on things like loot boxes.

After a delay from last November, Creative mode transactions went live a few days ago – folks who make islands (maps) using Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) will earn 100% of the value of V-Bucks (in-game currency) spent in their games until January 31, 2027, and after that, they'll earn 50%, according to Epic Games. This can arguably be considered a good way to support these devs, but things become a little more uncomfortable when you look at what can actually be sold.

Obviously, Fortnite is no stranger to in-game purchases, with the regular Item Shop selling cosmetics like skins, emotes, and back blings daily – and that's in addition to the steady stream of new battle passes. However, it doesn't sell loot boxes or anything gambling-adjacent, which is what makes certain allowances for in-island transactions particularly surprising.

There are a few rules over what Creative mode devs are allowed to sell – "items that visually overlap with other Fortnite cosmetics categories, but are purely cosmetic and offer no gameplay value," for example, are banned, but they can sell gameplay items, consumables, and "paid random items (items that provide a chance to receive a random reward)." It's that last point in particular that's leaving a bad taste in some players' mouths, especially since paid random items have already been incorporated into Steal the Brainrot – quite easily the most popular third-party Creative mode map.

As highlighted across social media, it's now possible to spend V-Bucks to get a random abomination (officially, sigh, brainrot), from what's essentially a loot box. These vary in price, but for example, a single "Present Rot" box costs 2,700 V-Bucks, and you can get two bundled together for 4,900. For reference, most of Fortnite's popular collab skins cost 1,500 V-Bucks, and that bundle of two Present Rots costs about $37 in real-world dollars (assuming you buy a 5,000 V-Buck pack – smaller increments would see it cost even more). This same map also allows players to spend V-Bucks on a boosted-odds wheel spin, once again with random rewards.

"This feature sucks. I can get around game passes that offer guaranteed better items (Pay To Win) BUT any UEFN map that promises a percent CHANCE to get better items for V-Bucks should not be allowed," one player argues, concerned that with Steal the Brainrot in particular being largely targeted toward children, "they will mindlessly spend thousands of v-bucks for a CHANCE to get better in-game items, and they will fall into this trap / loop every single time they find a map with little things they like."

"I was optimistic about In-Island Translations, but after seeing this gambling style wheel In Steal The Brainrot I think I'm all set," writes another.

It remains to be seen if any further restrictions end up being put in place for in-island purchases, especially considering how controversial loot boxes have become around the world – they're banned altogether in Belgium. Fortnite: Save the World even removed its own random loot boxes (in the form of llamas) years ago, with an update that opted to show players the contents of a llama before purchasing.

Fortnite lead gushes that "working at Epic allows you to have your childhood dreams come true" as its new South Park collab is teased: "Working on this one made me so happy."

Epic Games has announced that five player teams will be included in the game as a limited time mode to coincide with the South Park collab.

After teasing the collab earlier this week, Epic Games unveiled that South Park will be joining Fortnite on January 9, 2026. The announcement was joined by an animated short by the South Park team showing the main four boys playing the game and leaving poor Butters out of the game, before he appeared as his supervillain alter ego Professor Chaos with The Stick of Truth (of South Park: The Stick of Truth fame). This then teleported the five boys into Fortnite with mech suits, with the Imaginationland balloon taking over the Battle Bus, the Stick of Truth and Cheesy Poofs as in-game items, and a Cartman Land POI.

However, the big news was actually only teased in the trailer, and confirmed in the description. Fortnite is adding "Quints," a five-player team mode to the game alongside this South Park collab (presumably because they were also sad seeing Butters being left out). The text reads, "Channel Cartman, Kenny, Stan, Kyle, and Butters with their Outfits in the Shop and get rewarded with items from the free Born in Chaos Pass! Don't forget to explore Cartmanland and jump into the new Quints 5-person playlist. Live Friday until February 5."

Fortnite design director Ted Timmins explains the mode was added "because every squad has their 'Butters.'"

So at the moment, Quints is only a limited time mode until next month, however, a fan asks Timmins, "If it's a successful mode, can we keep it forever please," to which Timmins responds: "Make it successful then we'll talk."

Of course, this adds yet another two layers to the Battle Royale experience as now players will be split across five versions of the game mode depending on team size, and that's doubled with Zero Build – and then there's the litany of other modes on top of that. I personally like the idea of Quints, but I could see it becoming an issue if the playerbase isn't there, but let's hope that's not the case, because more options are always great.

Fortnite Chapter 7 was designed to take the game "back to its battle royale roots," even though it didn't actually start as one, and one lead is "both in awe and hugely proud of this team"

Fortnite has announced that South Park content will be arriving in the game this week, and the game's design director seems thrilled.

Fortnite has crossed over with everything at this point – good, bad, and weird, Epic Games has found a way to get its hands on it. But over the last few years, Epic has really gone after the animated sitcom market. Starting with Family Guy's Peter Griffin in 2024, this was swiftly followed by the likes of Futurama, King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, and Beavis and Butthead before culminating in an entire season based around The Simpsons last November. But one of the pillars of that genre will be soon joining them.

After some rumor and speculation, today Fortnite posted a picture of Butters from South Park playing the game with the caption "Chaos, loading…" Also included in the post is a date, 1.9.26 (which is three days from now, not September for those of you in countries that do dates the right way).

Fortnite design director Ted Timmins expresses his excitement for the collab in a follow-up post on Twitter, saying: "AHHHHHHHHHHHH WORKING ON THIS ONE MADE ME SO HAPPY." Timmins continues, "Please excuse the lack of professionalism here but working at Epic allows you to have your childhood dreams come true."

What the crossover entails hasn't been confirmed, but given the focus on Butters and the use of "Chaos," it's safe to assume Butters' supervillain alter ego, Professor Chaos, could be part of it.

Fortnite leaker HYPEX claims the crossover will feature multiple skins as well as Mythic items that players can pick up during their battle royale matches, so it looks like it won't just be cosmetics.

I'd also wager some form of Sidekick based on the recent SpongeBob collab, perhaps a Kenny sidekick that has a ton of death animations? We won't need to wait too long to know.

Until then, why not relive the show's finest moments with our ranking of the best South Park episodes.

Broadly speaking, platform and store exclusives are becoming relatively rare. Ballooning costs in a precarious industry mean most studios need every possible avenue for sales. The upcoming Lords of the Fallen 2 is working against this idea, coming out on the Epic Games Store only on PC, and one of the central devs believes it’ll make a negligible difference to the audience.

On Twitter, Marek Tyminski, founder and CEO of CI Games, explained why the sequel is tied to Epic's marketplace. "Let's be clear: majority of PC players who want a specific game will buy it on Epic if it’s exclusive there," he states. "This is backed by real sales data across all major markets, including North America and Europe (excluding Asia, first year after launch)."

When asked in the replies where he got this information from, he references GSD - literally Games Sales Data, the original chart for measuring consumerism in video games. He doesn't provide any numbers or statistics to substantiate his claim.

Although a number of releases have been tied to the Epic Games Store over the years, Remedy's Alan Wake 2 in 2023 is one of the few of comparable size. Figures for PC specifically haven't been made public, but it did take that game until the end of 2024 to become profitable across all systems.

You could argue that being on Epic made that harder when Steam would've offered a lot more potential sales, but there's no way of knowing without hard numbers. You'd be relying on anecdotal evidence from people claiming they'll never use Epic and similar services.

We'll simply have to see how this pans out for Lords of the Fallen 2. Tyminski previously stated Epic had made a "significant investment" into the project, which almost certainly took some pressure off the development team. The follow-up is due in 2026, just three years after the first Soulslike, and little else is known about it for now.

"Can you goon to level design?": Lords of the Fallen 2 boss says "yes," the Soulslike will feature sexy ladies in an effort to "continue improving," though fans are more concerned about gameplay

Fortnite Chapter 7 is here, and with Season 1 there are a number of new mechanics to use in the battle royale, including the ability to roll around when you're knocked down. With that also comes something else – Helldivers 2-esque ragdoll-like physics, which can see you uncontrollably tumbling down hills and being flung around by friend and foe alike.

When playing with a team (or solo, if you've managed to grab one of the rare new Self-Revive Devices), when you get knocked, you now have the ability to roll as well as crawl, giving you more room to flee from danger and get rescued by your friends. You have a fair bit of control over this… unless you happen to be by a hill, where your player character's newfound floppiness can see them tumble all the way down – very funny if it's what you were aiming for, perhaps less so if your friends are stuck watching you fall when they could really do with getting you back into the fight.

"This is the most embarrassing mechanic ever added to fortnite," one unlucky player writes, sharing a clip of them going on what must have felt like a journey across the entire map in one spectacularly long tumble.

Generally though, it's incredibly amusing. Responding to one clip on Twitter, Fortnite design director Ted Timmins reveals it was also, understandably, a very comical mechanic to test: "I remember in the internal playtest reviews for this having tears in my eyes as we practiced tumbling down hills over and over again."

Those new floppy ragdoll-esque animations are also front and center when knocked players are thrown and hit with cars. Social media is currently full of clips of people being launched in spectacular ways – you can bask in their glory below.

Ragdolls are the funniest thing they’ve added in a while from r/FortNiteBR

While some have been quick to point out that the mechanic doesn't really count as true, proper ragdolling – characters certainly aren't quite as floppy and likely to be sent into the stratosphere as they are in Helldivers 2, for example – it's still funny to watch, and feels like Epic may have taken another leaf out of Arrowhead's book after its bug-fighting season. Whatever the inspiration, however, I'm here for it.

Fortnite Chapter 7 was designed to take the game "back to its battle royale roots," even though it didn't actually start as one, and one lead is "both in awe and hugely proud of this team."

A wrinkle in Fortnite's history that can get overlooked is that it didn’t start as a battle royale, but as a more lighthearted survival game. The 100-person free-for-all mode came slightly after launch, but even as far as the devs are concerned, that's inconsequential at this point.

Or that's the implication, at least, from an amusing tweet by Fortnite design director Ted Timmins. "Many months ago we set out to take Fortnite back to its battle royale roots - where every match would feel different, to give the game a quality of life update, and respect what has made Fortnite, Fortnite," he says.

"I'm left both in awe and hugely proud of this team," he continues, "and while the new chapter is only just beginning - it's great to start it by seeing such positivity from the community."

While it's humorous to see Fortnite's "battle royale roots" referenced as some benchmark when it's simply not where the generation-defining game came from, there's an element of truth to the claim. For most fans, Fortnite is and has always been the playful skirmish we still know it has, where you drop in as one of many dozen players, striving to be the last one left.

In any case, his comment reflects what Fortnite Chapter 7 offers. There's a new self-revive item, along with the ability to get revived through Reboot Vans, as well as a Simple Build mechanic, the removal of gold bar carry over, forcing you to spend those dubloons while you have them, and the power to quick-scope while jumping.

These make gameplay quicker and more unpredictable, and along with the usual smattering of licensed skins and another map, have definitely injected some life into Fortnite coming into its ninth year (!). The new Simpsons season is still ongoing as well, if you fancy dropping into Springfield to cause some carnage.

Just remember, Fortnite: Save the World came first. Save the World is dead, long live Save the World.

Fortnite Chapter 7 kicks off with artist defending their work from AI allegations, probably not helped by Epic CEO's recent prediction that "AI will be involved in nearly all future production" of games

Fortnite's latest season is here, marking the start of the battle royale's seventh chapter, but some players are concerned that certain assets found in the latest update could be AI-generated, a worry that one artist has already responded to to defend their work.

As highlighted across social media, several assets have come under scrutiny – one of which is a poster featuring a yeti who has five toes on one foot and four on the other. "I can't tell if this is AI-generated, but the odd number of toes makes me think so," a Reddit user writes, sharing a screenshot. "I really hope it isn't AI!"

Is this Chapter 7 art AI generated? from r/FortNiteBR

"Certainly looks like it unfortunately," another agrees, while one alleges: "The AI sloppification begins."

Elsewhere, an in-game poster featuring a tomato-headed talk show presenter has also been called into question, with one player asking: "Did Fortnite use AI to make this poster?"

While there hasn't yet been an official response to these AI allegations, one artist has stepped forward after a spray cosmetic he designed came under scrutiny. The spray in question – titled 'Looking McFly' – stars Marty McFly and can be unlocked in the new Battle Pass, and quickly saw players questioning how it was made.

"Am I losing it or does this Fortnite spray look like it was AI-generated?" one player asks, while another writes: "This HAS to be AI, right???" However, in this case, artist Sean Dove says that's not the case.

"I guess someone on Reddit thinks this was AI," he writes in a post on Instagram. "I think the culprit is a clock in the background. I grabbed some clocks off image search, collaged them, and halftoned them. The numbers are bad, entirely possible I grabbed an AI clock an wasn't paying attention."

Backing up his point further, he shares another Instagram post, this time showing the various different layers of the artwork in art software Procreate. "I don't have a Reddit account but just in case people are being weird, here's my procreate layers," he adds.

Regardless of the accuracy of the AI accusations, it's little wonder that players are applying a little extra scrutiny to Fortnite right now following recent comments made by Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney. The CEO has recently been calling for the removal of Steam's "AI tag" – the disclosure added onto games on Steam that make it clear if AI was used in the development of a title, and if so, in what ways. He stated that "it makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production," and later doubled down, adding: "I just hate to see Valve confiscate ever more opportunity from small developers by facilitating new categories, cancel campaigns, and review bombing."

We've reached out to Epic Games to ask if AI was used to generate any assets in Fortnite Chapter 7: Season 1, and will update this article if we receive a response.

Old copy of Fortnite from before it went free-to-play sells for $42,500, and while you might think that's weird, remember that the person who bought it probably won't play it anyway.

A pristine copy of Fortnite for Xbox One has just sold at auction for an eye-watering $42,500 USD. You might reasonably wonder why a free-to-play game would command such a price, but this is a case of several oddball bits of Fortnite history – and the price-hiking effect of Wata grading – combining into one massive price tag.

This sealed, 2017 copy of Fortnite was given a 10 A++ grade by Wata Games, which essentially means that it's as close to perfect condition as it gets. Slabbed in an extra layer of plastic with Wata's grade attached, this copy sold for $42,500 on November 21 through Heritage Auctions (as spotted by IGN).

While the box simply says "Fortnite," this is an OG copy of what's now known as Fortnite: Save the World – the four-player co-op game that Epic originally launched in July 2017, a few months before the free-to-play Battle Royale mode would come out and completely take over the game's identity.

An OG retail copy of Fortnite has some value simply as a historical curiosity, and recent eBay listings suggest that you'd generally expect to pay $40-$70 for a normal, used Xbox One version. A sealed copy, however, is something entirely different.

See, these early versions of Fortnite come with an Early Access Pack code, granting you access to a handful of exclusive cosmetics and the ability to earn V-Bucks from playing Save the World. There's no limit on the amount of V-Bucks you can get here, which means anyone with an Early Access Pack – or as it eventually became known, a Founders Pack – can grind Save the World for effectively infinite V-Bucks over time.

Epic suspended digital sales of Founders Packs in 2020, which means that these original Early Access Pack codes are now extremely valuable. For that reason, sealed original copies of Fortnite with unused codes can sell for upwards of $1,000, and the codes themselves can command similar prices on their own.

It's just, you know, Wata grading adding another $41,000 or so of value to the package. Is it worth that price? Somebody was willing to pay it, so I guess by definition it is worth that amount of money. But there's more than a little irony in the fact that this perfect-graded version will likely remain forever in a slab of plastic, with the codes that made this version of the game so sought-after in the first place locked away where no one can reach them.

When does Fortnite Chapter 7 start? You can follow that link for all the details on launch.

Discourse is swirling around Steam's AI labelling after Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney doubled down on calling out the platform's handling of such assets. In response to someone claiming the category is unnecessary, an artist at Valve says it's crucial for allowing people to make informed purchases.

Matt Workman, a cinematographer and motion capture specialist, posts on Twitter that "Steam and all digital marketplaces need to drop the 'Made with AI' label,” because he believes it's becoming meaningless. Ayi Sánchez, an artist who's contributed to Counter-Strike at Valve, disagrees.

"This is like saying food products shouldn't have their ingredients list. Consumers should have the information to decide if they want to buy something or not depending on its content," he says. "The only people afraid of this are the ones that know their product is low effort."

Workman responds that art isn't comparable to food or appliances because they can be harmful to your health and wellbeing if improperly advertised. "I'm not afraid of the label personally. I think it's not enforced on Steam and the rules are not clear for developers or players," he adds.

They have another exchange over the distinction between household items and creative works, before Sánchez adds that labels for AI are an ethical concern, saying we shouldn't "excuse a technology" relying "on cultural laundering, IP infringement and slopification." He continues: "I know I am not alone thinking that creation is a matter of creators, not prompt engineers. Educated consumers will pick an original over counterfeit."

Over on LinkedIn, Workman weighs in further, sharing a story on Sweeney's comments and adding: "As it currently stands Valve/Steam's 'Made with AI' net is so wide it catches any developer who uses Unreal Engine, Google Suit (Gmail/Docs/Sheets), Slack (MANY AI automations), Adobe Products, Microsoft Office, etc. This lacks nuance."

While there are perhaps critiques to be made on Valve's execution for Steam's 'Made with AI' label, the fundamental idea of making sure players understand the tech has been used is sound. Some people care less than others on the inclusion of generative work in any given release, and we're all better for having more information, rather than less.

Microsoft shares study of gamers that reckons a whopping 79% are "open to help from AI," but let's all stop to consider the sample size: 1,500 people.

After criticizing Valve for including "made with AI" disclosures on Steam game pages, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is doubling down with a short explanation of why he's so opposed to the tags – they hurt "small developers," apparently.

Echoing the recent sentiment shared by Nexon, that people should just assume "every game company is now using AI" as the technology becomes more widespread, Sweeney spoke out against Valve's integration of AI disclosures on games' Steam listings. He argued the AI tag "makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production" – but that's not where his take on the situation ended.

Sweeney followed up in response to accusations that his opinion "heavily implies that Epic is now using AI coding tools for the latest updates to Unreal Engine," explaining that they are "not true" at all. "I just hate to see Valve confiscate ever more opportunity from small developers by facilitating new categories, cancel campaigns, and review bombing," the CEO continues in his reply. "Steam used to just facilitate downloads."

He concludes, "Then they foreclosed on payments, then price competition, then crypto, now AI." His thoughts aren't exactly surprising here, especially seeing as he recently chimed in on the Arc Raiders AI debate – the one concerning the new shooter's use of AI text-to-speech – arguing that the tech could actually somehow create "an even bigger opportunity" for voice actors. Expectedly, however, not everyone agrees.

The top comment made under Sweeney's follow-up proves as much. "'I just hate to see Valve putting consumers first,'" quips its writer. Another reads, "Asking to see the ingredients of a product is not confiscating opportunities, man. This self-righteous hyperbole is a bit much," while one underneath states, "Maybe it's not review bombing, maybe people just don't like AI-generated garbage? The existence of those negative reviews indicates the demand for said disclaimers."

I mean… they certainly do make a valid point there. Consumers are allowed to voice their own thoughts via reviews, and it doesn't necessarily mean it's "review bombing" – a solid chunk of the population is understandably still wary of AI.

Microsoft shares study of gamers that reckons a whopping 79% are "open to help from AI," but let's all stop to consider the sample size: 1,500 people

What are the hottest video games that you need to have on your radar as the end of the year approaches? With Summer Game Fest and Gamescom in the rearview mirror, knowing where to place your attention is easier said than done. That's why Hot 25 exists, to help you cut through the noise and connect with the world's most anticipated video games.

GamesRadar+ launched Hot 25 in the summer, a list updated quarterly that tracks the hottest games of the moment. The Fall Edition of Hot 25 is designed to reflect the games that are turning our heads right now – the ones we know you're going to fall in love with too. It doesn't matter whether a title is set to release in a couple of weeks or years beyond that, Hot 25 tracks the 25 hottest games deserving of your time today.

We've been keeping a close eye on the video games GamesRadar+ readers have been gravitating towards, not to mention the titles you keep shouting about in our comments section and across our social media channels, to help build a list of viable titles. From there, the GR+ Editorial Team voted to lock in the hottest of the lot, and from there Hot 25 was born. So keep scrolling to find the Fall 2025 Edition of Hot 25, and don't forget to let us know what your most anticipated video games are by voting for your favorite and leaving comments below.

The Hot 25: Summer 2025 Edition

The Final Countdown

11. Forza Horizon 6

Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

2026 is going to be a massive year for Xbox Game Studios. The publisher is working to deliver new installments to the Forza, Fable, Gears, and Halo franchises within a single calendar year as Xbox celebrates its 25th anniversary. Forza Horizon 6 was announced at the Tokyo Game Show in September, a fitting location as developer Playground Games revealed that the open-world racing adventure will be set in Japan. That's been a long-requested locale for a series best known for letting you race around some truly stunning vistas. There's still so much we need to learn about Forza Horizon 6, but with Playground already out there promising its largest open world to date (not to mention a stunning realization of the Japan setting) we cannot wait to get our hands on this one.

10. The Blood of Dawnwalker

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

The Blood of Dawnwalker is going to be one of the most talked-about video games of 2026. It's the debut project from developer Rebel Wolves, a studio staffed by former CD Projekt RED veterans (including the game director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt). This upcoming single-player RPG has you take on the role of a Coen, a Dawnwalker that's suffering both silver poisoning and a vampiric curse – an ailment which pushes and pulls you in different directions as you set out on a quest to save your family. You'll have just 30 days to try and achieve this, with every major decision that you make in the gothic open world shifting the time of day forward. Time is as valuable a resource here as the weapons you carry on your back, making The Blood of Dawnwalker one of the most unique offerings of 2026.

9. Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

It has been 20 long years since the last mainline installment to the Onimusha franchise, a legendary action-adventure series that was once considered one of the best reasons to own a PS2 (here's a fun fact: Onimusha: Warlords was the first game on the platform to achieve one million sales). Capcom is looking to wield that legacy as it prepares to unleash Onimusha: Way of the Sword in 2026. If you're looking for an old-school action-adventure game then you need look no further, with Capcom going out of its way to stress that Way of the Sword is not a Soulslike – there's a more resolute focus on fast-paced action, clashing blades, and sharp timings to survive vicious onslaughts. Everything we have played of Way of the Sword so far has impressed, so the return of Onimusha can't come soon enough.

8. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch 2 | Release date: December 4, 2025

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond may not be the last video game to release in 2025, but it's certainly the most anticipated. It's been 18 long years since developer Retro Studios delivered Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, with the extended wait leaving many worried that we'd never again steer Samus Aran through a strange, hostile alien world. But here we are, readying ourselves for a descent into the depths of Viewros, a planet besieged by rival bounty hunter Sylux of Metroid Prime: Hunters fame. Retro is taking some big swings with Beyond, embellishing Samus' power suit with a suite of new psychic abilities and the introduction of a far broader world to explore – a space you'll navigate with a motorbike. There's a lot of unanswered questions about Beyond, but it is undoubtedly the Switch 2 release we can't stop thinking about.

7. Fable

Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC 2026

Playground Games has never released a third-person RPG before, yet it has been entrusted with bringing about a return to Albion in 2026. It's an undoubtedly massive undertaking, although we have faith that the team can bring about a faithful reimagining of Fable for modern audiences who have instead grown up playing fantasy RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3. Playground is best known for developing the Forza Horizon series, games that contain stunning depth and detail, with best-in-class mechanics packaged into some of the best-looking open-worlds the industry has to offer. From what we have seen so far of Fable 4, that same commitment to excellence is being applied here. It's been a decade since Fable Legends was canceled and Lionhead was shuttered, so expectations are high; but all signs are pointing towards this being one of the definitive RPGs of the incoming year.

6. The Duskbloods

Platform(s): Nintendo Switch 2 | Release date: TBC 2026

The release of a new video game from FromSoftware is always cause for celebration, with the studio on a frankly ridiculous hot streak. The last decade has brought us Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring, Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, and Elden Ring Nightreign – so what then should we expect from The Duskbloods? Well, it's a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive for one thing. Legendary game director Hidetaka Miyazaki is hard at work shaping one of the key reasons to adopt the new platform in 2026, with The Duskbloods promising action-RPG brutality in PvP and PvE combat. FromSoftware is clearly building on its experience with Nightreign here, shifting gears into more gothic territories to inform its world design and combat specialties. The Duskbloods is different, but FromSoftware has never been afraid of bucking expectations.

5. Grand Theft Auto 6

Platform(s): PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: November 19, 2026

Delays out of Rockstar North are as expected as day turning to night. It's why we weren't all that surprised when GTA 6 was delayed from May 26 to November 19, 2026. The developer has cited a need for additional polish to explain away the release date change. It's likely those six months will help prepare Rockstar for what will surely be the biggest entertainment release of all time, particularly as hype for this long-awaited return to Vice City is already stratospheric. It's already been over 12 years since the release of GTA 5, so surely we can all hold out for just a little longer.

When GTA 6 does land in 2026, you'll be following dual protagonists – Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos – as you set about causing chaos in the wide open world of Leonida. We're yet to see raw gameplay footage, but everything shown to the world so far demonstrates Rockstar's proficiency for delivering technical excellence. So much of GTA 6 has been under lock and key, but the promise of guiding Duval and Caminos through a statewide conspiracy after a failed bank robbery is sure to be the only thing the world is talking about come November 19.

4. The Witcher 4

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: TBC

Of all the video games which have charted on our updated Hot 25 list, The Witcher 4 is the only one unlikely to launch in 2026. In fact, it's likely that this RPG is still years away from release – with developer CD Projekt RED working to both deliver on its massive ambitions and avoid the pitfalls which sank the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Still, The Witcher 4 has been lodged in our minds ever since the studio released a stunning Unreal Engine 5 tech demo over the summer, a showcase of the technology that's threatening to raise expectations for open-world RPG design.

It's still early days for The Witcher 4, but we do know that the experience will focus on Ciri – charting her journey as a Witcher following Geralt's retirement at the end of Wild Hunt. A new protagonist means you should expect a new powerset to grapple with, particularly as CDPR has already been vocal about its desire to integrate Ciri's proficiencies with sorcery directly into combat. Fiery new weapons and more dynamic monster encounters are inbound, so too is a more densely detailed and reactive world to explore. The Witcher 4 may be on the distant horizon, but it looms large over a genre CDPR has revolutionized time and time again.

3. 007: First Light

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: March 27, 2026

007: First Light is transforming into something relatively unexpected. When it was announced that IO Interactive was taking up the challenge of developing a modern James Bond game worth playing, many assumed we'd be getting a reskinned Hitman. The studio has, after all, built a reputation for creating wildly reactive stealth games set across self-contained environments. It was easy to imagine Bond working in this sort of framework, albeit with the focus shifted from assassination towards espionage.

What we're getting instead is far more ambitious, and exciting. 007: First Light tracks a young Bond as he works his way through the MI6 training program, yet to earn the legendary '007' code name and the license to kill which comes along with it. What continues to surprise us about First Light is how cinematic its action and set-pieces look. Hitman meets Uncharted is a comparison that's being made, and not all that far from the truth. What's staggering is the wealth of choice and opportunity that is being put on display, giving you the freedom to roleplay Bond like never before.

2. Resident Evil Requiem

Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Release date: February 27, 2026

What secrets will emerge from the ruins of Raccoon City? That's the question on everybody's mind as we inch ever closer to the release of Resident Evil Requiem. Capcom is shifting gears after RE7 and RE8, looking beyond the adventures of the Winters family to refocus on the core timeline. You'll be playing as Grace Ashcroft, daughter to Alyssa Ashcroft – one of the primary protagonists in Resident Evil Outbreak, the co-op focused spin-off from 2003. She'll be venturing into a city which defined the earliest years of the franchise, some 30 years after the US Government eradicated it with an experimental thermobaric missile.

Everything we have played of Resident Evil Requiem so far points to it being a horrific celebration of all eras of the series, perhaps best represented in how the game gives you the freedom to play in either first- or third-person perspectives. Regardless of how you choose to play, the action is tense; Capcom is working to create something truly terrifying, the sort of experience where your movements are measured in inches due to the fear of what awaits around every corner. Expect Resident Evil Requiem to not only be one of the biggest games of 2026, but a true GOTY contender to GTA 6.

1. Marvel's Wolverine

Platform(s): PS5 | Release date: Fall 2026

Just as we were starting to fear that Marvel's Wolverine would slip beyond 2026, Insomniac Games appeared to not only lock in a Fall 2026 release window but deliver an absolutely stunning first look at this adventure in action. The studio has of course established a reputation for delivering best-in-class superhero games through its work on Marvel's Spider-Man, so it should come as no surprise that Wolverine appears set to be an authentic realization of the character and the violent world he occupies.

Marvel's Wolverine isn't pulling any punches. It's an exceptionally bloody action-adventure where you'll guide Logan on a globetrotting journey for answers. The combat is slick and fluid, environments bathed in blood as you slice, rip, and tear through foes with sharp adamantium claws. There's a ferocity underlying everything which we just didn't expect to see from such a prominent first-party exclusive.

Ferocity, and a keen attention to detail. Marvel's Wolverine will clearly be the PS5 system showcase for 2026, with its dazzling visual effects and cinematic setpieces. There are still questions to be answered surrounding the difficulty (Logan does have a rapid healing factor, after all), but these concerns fade to the background every time we see more of the game in action. Wolverine and Insomniac appear to be a match made in heaven, which is why Marvel's Wolverine is clearly the hottest video game on the planet right now.