Epic Games gave Creators until February 4th to clear their thumbnails, titles, and metadata of terms that overpromise on XP, according to Mackenzie (MackJack) Jackson’s Linkedin post on January 23, 2025. By doing this, fewer players will be deceived into joining games like “Coin Slide” that can’t actually offer their players copious amounts of coins or XP as advertised.

Primer: What is the Fortnite Creator Economy?

• In Fortnite, the community can also create their own games and islands for anyone to play. These Creators are paid based on how many players visit their island and in March 2023, payouts expanded to also include a player’s engagement level.
• When engagement (how much time players are in a game) also became part of the payouts equation, creators on average received 1.45 times more in just one month.
• By also rewarding Creators for engagement, Fortnite signaled that a quality player experience is more or just as important as attracting someone to your game in the first place.
• In 2024, Epic Games announced that Fornite UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) paid its Creators a total of $324 million.

What are they Changing?

Mackenzie (MackJack) Jackson (Developing Brand Experiences in Fortnite, CEO and Co-Founder of Alliance Studios) posted on Linkedin:

Exciting news from Epic Games!
🚨 Starting February 4, they are implementing a crucial update to their Creator Rules (1.13) that will positively impact the platform’s growth and integrity. The update aims to address misleading content in island thumbnails, titles, and metadata – specifically around terms like “AFK,” “XP,” “Coin farm,” and “Coin slide,” which have often misled players into believing they can earn or unlock unrealistically high amounts of XP.
Spoilers: They can’t! 😅
This change is a significant step toward ensuring a healthier ecosystem, improving player experience, and maintaining trust within the community.
🚀 By cracking down on this misleading content, Epic is not only prioritizing fairness but also fostering a more authentic and enjoyable environment for creators and players alike.
Creators now have until February 4th to make sure their metadata aligns with the new guidelines.
Failure to do so will result in escalating penalties, including monetization impacts, island removal, or even account suspension. It’s time to keep it real and focus on delivering quality experiences that players can trust.
I know for me, this has been a long time coming, and I’m really hopeful to see positive results in discovery.-

As a Mom who studies video games but is a casual gamer myself, I always assume that games like Fortnite will have this kind of content, that it has “always been this way.” We started talking to our kids about advertising as soon as they were affected by it. Between that and some good Fortnite role models, they never had a problem seeing through these games (for the most part).

It’s a part of gaming that is so simple to change, yet most–like me–assume the brands don’t care, or don’t want to ruffle the fandom.

I am so grateful to Jackson and their team for fighting for this. By turning engagement/time played into a contributing factor in 2023, they encouraged Creators to focus on quality gameplay. With this next step, Jackson and her team prove that Creators and Brands can make money without deceit, without turning every experience grossly transactional.

Read more: Fortnite and Disney? A Parent Primer if You’re Still Unsure

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Sources:

• Jackson, Mackenzie (MackJack), LinkedIn, 23 January 2025.
• The Fortnite Team, “Introducing Creator Economy 2.0,” Creator Portal. 22 May 2023.
• Takahashi, Dean, “Fortnite by the Numbers,” Venture Beat, 22 January 2025.
• Takahasi, Dean, “Epic Games rewards Fortnite creators with payouts based on time played,” Venture Beat, 1 June, 2023.