Epic Games' Fortnite proved to be one of 2017's weirdest gaming success stories. Following years of sluggish development and a half-baked "paid early access" launch in July, the game received a new, entirely free mode in an update for all PC and console versions. That mode, the incredibly PUBG-like Fortnite Battle Royale, has gone on to rack up millions of players (though exactly how many is unclear, since Epic still describes both the paid and free content as a combined number of over 40 million).
The mode's success hasn't left every Epic Games fan satisfied, however. On Tuesday, the company put an exclamation point on growing rumblings from fans of one of its other free-to-play products, the "action MOBA" game Paragon, by admitting that Fortnite BR's success may be Paragon's undoing.
In a post at Paragon's official Reddit community, an unnamed Epic staffer admits that the game's various updates since its 2016 "early access" launch have not driven "large enough" player growth. For the uninitiated, Paragon launched both as an Unreal Engine 4 showcase and as a take on games like Dota 2 and League of Legends, with a more active, behind-the-character camera angle (a formula seen in other recent F2P games, including Smite and Gigantic).
"This [lack of player growth], combined with the humbling success of Fortnite, has caused us to question if we have a good path to grow Paragon and make it thrive," the staffer adds. In the post, the staffer confirms that fans aren't imagining things; Paragon's development updates have indeed slowed down in part because a number of its developers "jump[ed] onto Fortnite to help sustain the game."
From there, the developer describes Paragon's future in a chicken-and-egg manner. Epic hints to updates and improvements, but it also confirms that the game's "release cadence"—meaning, how often it receives updates—will be slowed down. The post also twice indicates that substantial changes to the game are a matter of "if," rather than "when." Based on this post's phrasing, Epic may be indicating that without more players, the game won't receive substantial updates. Without more updates, the game won't attract more players.
The rest of the announcement thread is full of regular members offering suggestions that some users complain have already been "taken under consideration" by Epic with no sign that they will ever manifest in the game. Those suggestions include ranked multiplayer modes, specific balance requests for Paragaon's five-on-five combat, and a complete overhaul of the game's "card" system. (Currently, new players can be mathematically outdone by older players who purchase "cards" using in-game currency called "reputation." Players cannot directly buy these cards with real-world money, but they can pay money to increase how quickly this reputation currency is earned.)
This follows months of concern among the community over developer silence and questions about the game's long-term development roadmap. (One of the community's highest-voted threads includes a lot of conjecture based on business decisions surrounding Epic and the company's stakeholders at Tencent, who operate Riot Games and the popular MOBA game League of Legends.)
Fan concerns aren't just being aimed at Paragon. Fans of Fortnite's standard "Save The World" mode, which still requires buying a "Founder's Pack" to play ahead of an eventual free-to-play launch, are complaining about similar development drop-off compared to Fortnite BR. As the latter mode gears up for a major update to its default map in the next few days, the former mode continues lacking access to community-demanded features like a more easily accessed tower-defense mode.
"I bought [Fortnite] expecting PvE fort-building, but Epic decided to dump that and go chasing the PUBG money instead," one ResetERA forum member writes.
This article has been updated to correct an error about in-game currency in Paragon.
Epic Games' Fortnite proved to be one of 2017's weirdest gaming success stories. Following years of sluggish development and a half-baked "paid early access" launch in July, the game received a new, entirely free mode in an update for all PC and console versions. That mode, the incredibly PUBG-like Fortnite Battle Royale, has gone on to rack up millions of players (though exactly how many is unclear, since Epic still describes both the paid and free content as a combined number of over 40 million).
The mode's success hasn't left every Epic Games fan satisfied, however. On Tuesday, the company put an exclamation point on growing rumblings from fans of one of its other free-to-play products, the "action MOBA" game Paragon, by admitting that Fortnite BR's success may be Paragon's undoing.
