It's hard to be excited about Fortnite right now

After 1,500 hours in Fortnite, I might finally be reaching my limit.

I’ve played Fortnite fairly consistently since 2017, when I started playing Battle Royale as a means to hold myself over until PUBG came to the Xbox One later that year. Fortnite has since become my most-played video game, and even as my friends slowly fell off and moved on to other live-service games, I never stopped playing Fortnite. However, the game’s current state has me wanting to take an extended break for the first time.

It’s natural for a live service game to have ups and downs; a natural part of the relationship is walking away when the game starts to feel stale, and coming back when an exciting new update turns things on their head. Fortnite’s current season, titled “Showdown,” is a miss for me. While I admire the effort to recenter the game’s original storyline, the Showdown mechanic, map, and loot pool all leave me feeling underwhelmed.

But that’s not a new feeling. Plenty of Fortnite seasons have felt less than the game's best. In many cases, I’ve been happy to trudge along through such seasons, still progressing through my Battle Pass and kicking the tires on whatever the latest gimmick is. Now, though, it’s hard to give Fortnite the benefit of the doubt, and a lot of it goes back to a series of head-scratching decisions from developer and publisher Epic Games.

Back in March, Fortnite increased the price on V-Bucks, its premium in-game currency, to “help pay the bills,” as Epic Games so eloquently put it. Great, even V-Bucks aren’t safe from inflation. Then, just two weeks later, the studio laid off a thousand employees. I know that we’ve all grown a bit desensitized to layoffs at this point, but stop for a moment and imagine what one thousand people look like. Now imagine that they all contributed, in one way or another, to building what might go down as the most influential multiplayer game of the 21st century. And lastly, imagine that they all got laid off so that the company behind said influential multiplayer game can keep its finances in check, while its filthy rich CEO blabbers on about AI and positions his company as some sort of industry martyr.

Also, Fortnite apparently spends more money than it makes. Can you believe that? I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. But then I think about some of the player-made modes that dominate Fortnite’s internal charts. You know, like Steal The Brainrot, a game riddled with AI-generated art and assets. Epic pays out a lot of cash to the creators of games like this.

I’m sure that a lot of money is also going to collaborations, which have become synonymous at this point. I’ve bought plenty of collab skins myself, so I’m not looking to crucify Epic for putting cool movie characters in Fortnite. But, whatever the culture’s collective appetite is for “Fortnite meets [insert popular IP here],” I think we might’ve satisfied it a while ago. Not only do these endless collaborations likely cost a lot of money and resources, but they’ve also rid Fortnite of any individuality or identity. “Internet, the video game,” as Head of Video Greg Burke likes to call it.

So, with all that said, I find it increasingly hard to open the Epic Games Store and launch Fortnite. Not only are the current gameplay offerings stale, but Epic Games has, in my opinion, made some critical missteps in the handling of its cultural behemoth. I love Fortnite, and want to see it in better shape. I’m checked out for now, but I hope Epic Games can return it to its former glory at some point.

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