Former Boss Explains Why Fortnite Isn’t Doing Live Events Anymore – Says It’s Devastating

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In 2018 and 2019 in particular, the online shooter Fortnite drove the gaming world crazy: with new ideas and spectacular live events, it dominated the discussion in gaming for over two years. Then something changed. Fortnite’s then-head Donald Mustard explains that Epic sacrificed the “magic of Fortnite.”

How did Fortnite dominate the gaming world back then?

  • Fortnite: Battle Royale began in late 2017 and peaked in 2018. The decisive factor was certainly the Battle Royale game concept, which was ideal as a live streaming game.
  • But Fortnite had long-term success through the “live events”: a story was told in each season and the world was constantly changing. The game stayed fresh.
  • The highlight of these live events was the end of Season 10, in October 2019, when the world of Fortnite ended with a big bang. Back then, 6 million people stared at a black hole.

    • Fortnite: The Time a Black Hole Swallowed You All

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    Epic sacrificed live events for the metaverse: “Devastating”

    Why are you away from it? Longtime Fortnite lead creator Donald Mustard now talks about why they moved away from these live events in an interview with Gamefiled. Apparently against the wishes of Donald Mustard, who left Epic Games about a year later:

    “In mid-2022, Epic wanted to expand Lego Fortnite and Fortnite Racing, the new expansion of Fortnite, into a proper multi-game metaverse that should go online in December 2023. It takes so many people and so much time to develop all of these things. Basically the event team was needed for other things. And that was devastating for me because I thought, ‘This is actually the magic.’ And not everyone at Epic agrees with that.’”

    Players see different visions of Fortnite – the wrong person won

    How is this discussed? On Reddit, people discuss exactly the magic of these live events. Today, players still remember Chapter 1, where the island continuously changed in nuances, telling a story through the change in the environment.

    On reddit, a user believes that everyone at Epic wanted the metaverse, but in different visions:

  • The head of Epic, Tim Sweeney, wanted Fortnite to be a platform for games like Roblox – with completely different games, different modes.
  • Mustard wanted a single evolving world with large unique events.

    • Ultimately, Sweeney prevailed. Donald Mustard left Epic Games in September 2023 (via twitter).

    Fortnite was developed with far too much pressure back then

    This is what lies behind it: The timing doesn’t quite fit. Fortnite lost a lot of its hype well before 2022; with the end of the Fortnite World Cup in summer 2019, the game noticeably ran out of steam.

    Mustard is certainly right that the “magic” of Fortnite decreased significantly as the live events died down and the game no longer provides these highlights as often as it used to.

    However, part of the truth is that Epic Games worked on Fortnite at an insane pace from 2017 to 2019 in order to keep bringing new content and items into the game. According to insider reports, this led to developers failing and suffering from burnout.

    Allegedly, employees worked 70 hours a week at the time, some even over 100. “Voluntary overtime” was expected.

    According to anonymous statements from employees, the bosses wanted to keep the Fortnite hype alive as long as possible and always release a new patch.

    After 2019, the pace of Fortnite’s development slowed down significantly.

    Even if you can tell from Mustard that he is not a big fan of “Lego Fortnite”, the mode has caused a revival again:

    LEGO Fortnite cracks the 2.4 million player mark – more than all other modes combined

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