Fortnite creators will get paid for encouraging players to spend

theverge.com:

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

Fortnite maker Epic Games is going to reward creators if players spend V-bucks before or after visiting that creator’s custom-made Fortnite experience. The change is happening as part of an update announced Wednesday to the engagement-based formula Epic uses to pay Fortnite creators.

Epic first introduced the engagement-based payouts (which it calls “Creator Economy 2.0”) in March. Under the program, Epic pays creators who build experiences for Fortnite from a pool of 40 percent of Fortnite’s net revenues each month. Epic itself is also eligible to receive money from that pool. At launch, two of Epic’s key engagement metrics for payouts were player popularity and player retention, and soon after, the company added a metric that rewards time played.

Here is the specific language about the new metric, from Fortnite’s blog post:

Effective November 1, we are introducing a new metric to the engagement payout formula that rewards creators when individual players spend V-Bucks in Fortnite before or after engaging with their island.

So, as an example, if you buy the forthcoming Alan Wake outfit right before jumping into Epic’s Alan Wake-themed Fortnite experience, it seems as if that purchase would contribute to Epic’s payouts it receives as part of the Creator Economy 2.0 program.

Epic’s description doesn’t specify how much time a player has to spend money before or after visiting an island (Epic’s term for a creator’s experience) for it to count toward a creator’s payouts, and I’ve asked the company if it can clarify. But in the blog post, Epic says that the new