Epic Pulls Fortnite Dog From Sale After Player Backlash, Compensation Being Provided

"Free" to play. Pay for all the so-called goodies.

I hate this system. These should be unlockables, not purchasables. These kinds of things used to be just that. But now that developers know they can just put them in the shop for sale, they less and less put them in the game. Or worse, they put them in the game, but you have to pay to unlock them.

Rubbish like this is why we’re deprived of story pack DLCs or a Grand Theft Auto VI.

@Heavyarms55 Well that's the problem with the free2play model. I think it's better to just pay for a game that gives you all the content, but of course we are in an era where publishers love to divide content and sell it as a season pass or something so they can essentially charge double.

@Heavyarms55 fortnite is a free to play game with well balanced MXT, EPIC has all the right to monitize their free game they keep supporting with free updates, as has any company releasing free games.

If it was a paid game I would’ve agreed though, but it is not.

Haha, the dog is wearing a balaklava!

pls pay

@Heavyarms55 With the utmost respect, I totally disagree. It used to be the case that you buy the game and play the game. That was it. Now there's another way; the base game is free, and you can pay for optional cosmetics that have absolutely no bearing on the gameplay. This is how to do it right. I have mountains of stuff, been playing for ages and I've never spent a penny on Fortnite. EDIT: And I feel like I'm getting away with daylight robbery 😂

The occasion when it grinds my gears is when they make you pay for the game and have already thrown in a load of paid content. That's what's not cricket. An expansion pack I can get behind, provided the base game is good value for money. But if they make the game and then after the fact lock half of it behind a paywall, or develop a bunch of cosmetics, in effect making you pay twice, then I'm not touching it with a barge pole.

@Jacob1092 the worst offenders are €60 games that have a option to buy ingame currency for €100 multiple times and those €100 of ingame currency gets you like less than 1% of new stuff compared to what’s already in the base €60 game.
Like a game has 100 different horses but for €20 you can have a flaming horse. Woo, so exciting!

Fans believe the new Gunner item is just a re-skin of Bonesy

I don’t see it 🔎🤔

A lazy cashshop reskin getting pulled from Fortnite is headline worthy, but I consistently have to use other sites to see what's in the (sometimes major) patches my Switch games get.

@darkswabber It should have been a paid game. Games should be paid, with the content in them, from the start. I hate this free to play model and I hate that it is becoming more and more the norm.

@Heavyarms55 There’s absolutely nothing purchasable in Fortnite that changes the gameplay experience. Someone who pays for additional items has zero advantage over someone who doesn’t spend a penny. It’s all cosmetic. It’s actually the fairest way to do a free-to-play game. I can’t see why that would bother you. I understand the disappointment in the typical free-to-play but pay-to-win model of most other games, but this is nothing like that. Someone can play Fortnite for hundreds of hours without spending so much as a cent and they are always on a perfectly level playing field with someone who invests money in simple skins to make their character look different. It’s a completely balanced and fair way to provide a totally free and complete game.

That basically is a reskin. The only difference is the dog is slightly different and the symbol on the thing on its neck.

These idiots are paying for digital collectibles, they wanted it so now they are getting it good and hard.

@thesilverbrick This is totally false. Changing the color of an item or player increases or decreases it's visibility at distance. That changes gameplay.

@Heavyarms55 Games cost money and are going to be monetized one way or another. I prefer games to cost upfront so that the game design can center around being fun instead of attempting to be just annoying enough to noodle little bits of money from the player. It's the big reason I play so few games on mobile.

How much is 1,000 fortnite monies in real monies?

@Lizuka If parents are allowing their children to bully other kids, especially because of a stupid game with optional digital content, then the f2p model is the least of the problems. Adequate parenting - - which includes taking away Fortnite privileges - - would be the bigger issue.

All paid content is essentially cosmetic. A W coming across your screen for a few seconds rather than an L is cosmetic too. Microtransactions that end up costing a full-priced game several times over and limited edition items that require people to play for many hours at a time promote video game addiction, a psychological disorder according to the World Health Organization. This pricing strategy is essentially just a form of price discrimination, with level of addiction being the criteria that determines how much you pay.

@Heavyarms55 Being free-to-play is the only reason Fortnite has the huge audience of kids that PUBG doesn't. If it was a paid game, it absolutely wouldn't have taken off as much. Most people would probably just play PUBG instead of this new clone Epic was asking them to pay for.

I swear, devs and publishers will react in nanoseconds if it's regarding something buyable, but when it's about gamebalance or bad patches, it takes forever.

love epic made a mistake then fixed it and then some

For all the issues with many free to play games Fortnite seems to be pretty good value all round. I bought season pass for my kids and since then they have continued to earn enough for the next season as well as unlocking a ton of skins that has kept them happy. They have been playing for months, getting loads of new stuff and all for about £7 each. That is a model I can support. See how for you get in FIFA with just £7

I'm with @Heavyarms55 on this one. I get that the game is fee to pay with only "cosmetic" purchases, but I would have much rather have the game be a one-time purchase and then I can unlock all the cosmetics through normal in-game means. Basically what I'm saying is that I support Super Mario Run and not Animal Crossing Pocket Camp.

@Heavyarms55 I love this system because there is absolutely no reason to pay for anything.

It's funny how everyone complains about a game that is free......
There is no lootboxes, only progression rewards and a store. You can actually earn enough to buy a season pass by doing missions, leveling up, and such.

I've only spent about $10 on the game to buy one season and if you play enough, you can earn enough vbucks to get the next season pass and earn pretty cool cosmetics. (I suck at the game but still have fun when I good off with friends)
Heck if you never want to spend more than $20 or so on a game, buy Save the World and you'll earn hundreds of Vbucks from there buy just logging on and finishing missions.

@Lizuka That’s a societal problem, not a flaw in game design.

@AnnoyingFrenzy Fortnite isn’t like Pocket Camp. Purchases in Fortnite don’t make the game any easier or quicker to play. Purchases In Pocket Camp help speed up the gameplay and progression for those who aren’t patient enough to wait to earn things by normal means. There is no character progression in Fortnite. Someone who has spent nothing has no technical disadvantage over someone who spends hundreds of dollars. It’s a level playing field, regardless of the money spent.

@StevenG That’s a stretch and you know it. Plus, the default skins tend to have muted or camo colors. They are some of the hardest to see in any standard environment.

It’s funny you say that they give you an advantage in your reply to me, yet in the comment right above it you mock them as simply “digital collectibles”. So which is it?

@thesilverbrick It's not a stretch. We used to cheat at CS this way, make the enemies brightly colored.

A dog is a digital collectible, a costume can give an advantage to a disadvantage. I did not expect this to be hard to understand.

I'm just glad the Fortnite fad is starting to die down. Though it is funny that Minecraft has been making a resurgence.

@StevenG None of the purchasable costumes are significantly more camouflaged than the default ones. If anything, the paid costumes tend to be more outlandish and conspicuous. That giant banana isn’t exactly going to be hiding from anyone. And regardless, someone can earn enough V-bucks without spending a penny to purchase any normally paid content over time. Someone who spends actual money gets no competitive advantage over someone who doesn’t, no matter how you slice it.

@thesilverbrick Yeah I get that, I just don't care. I was just using Pocket Camp as a "in-game microtransaction" model vs Super Mario Run's "one-time payment". Replace Pocket Camp with Fortnite, Candy Crush, CTR, or any such game and it works for me.

@AnnoyingFrenzy but you have to remember that many people don't have the money to buy the game in the first place so the type of "f2p" model that fortnite has is very generous to the low income gamer. Not to mention that you have access to everything that people who by the season pass has access to besides the cosmetics it is really fair. It's a win for the business and consumer alike. I mean, you probably spend more on games than the average consumer. And if that's the case then I would understand why you would feel that way towards the system.

@StevenG Even if that were true, those skins that can be bought wouldn't help win in the slightest. I've played fortnite back then for hours and a skin won't help hide much unless your opponents all have low res tv's. I'm not fond of fortnite like I used to be but there's no point in ripping on their nearly flawless system.

@Heavyarms55 Developers need to buy food and stuff you know.

But this one has a little white star on its bandana. Clearly much different. I cant really relate to spending money on cosmetic stuff, it is so monumentally foolish to me.

I find the dog odd. Its a game where you shoot people, you'd think animal activists would have made a controversy out of it

@JereJK Actually, in this current microtransaction climate, I feel I spend LESS on games than the average consumer! I only buy the games and any DLC if I feel like its worth getting, never any of the microtransactions, which are designed to nickel and dime you into paying more than you thought you had. I consider myself a non-hardcore gamer as I have a large variety of games across many different consoles. Meanwhile, my friend, who is a casual gamer through and through, plays only two types of games, GTA V and Madden/NBA and I am almost certain he has spent more money than me at this point.

@AnnoyingFrenzy I guess it just depends on the person. I have a friend that doesn't spend any money on games at all and the only games he plays is f2p. He's put in over 100 hours on games like fortnite without spending a dime on anything but his console

@JereJK That's cool, there are definitely people out there that have the patience and wherewithal to avoid succumbing to some of the more predatory tactics of the game industry (and peer pressure as some news articles have pointed out).

It really boils down to this for me, I don't like spending money on cosmetic items and wish those items were just normal unlockables in the game. Back when I played COD: MW2, this was done by completing challenges with certain guns; use a gun enough you unlocked a new camo for the gun or another gun entirely. It's that kind of system that I respond better to as it encourages the player to use other weapons to unlock other weapons or camos or equipment or whatever, and there was NO way to just pay for the cosmetic item or new weapon.

If I were to just buy a skin in Fortnite, that skin has lost all sentimental value to me as I didn't feel I earned it, but I acknowledge that this part is a me thing and isn't a knock against the system itself.

TLDR: Modern Warfare 2 is better than Fortnite

There's absolutely nothing wrong with fortnite microtransactions, fortnite would make no money without them so what's the point, even games like smite, paladins, apex legends, warframe and dauntless are all free to play but offer microtransactions to keep the game running and updated.

@Jacob1092 I agree with you to some extent. I also payed for like one battle pass ages ago and haven't given them any money since. They give you more than a fair shot to earn the next battle pass. But this kind of stuff is pretty crappy you have to admit, they knew what they were doing

@SonOfVon Yeah, this specifically wasn't great, dipping a toe too see what the backlash might have been or something.

Who cares? Everything they sell is just a cheap "reskin".

@AnnoyingFrenzy Can't disagree with that, I'm a huge MW3 and 2 is great as well. But while the systems in both the games worked so well, it's worth noting that Activision put out a new entry every year so if you wanted to keep up with the times you basically had to buy the new one. If you ask me, I feel like buying the new edition every year is pretty much the same in terms of price as buying cosmetic items separately.

And also, Fortnite does give out freebies and give players chances to earn in-game currency and skins without spending any money. They have challenges where you can get rare items without even purchasing a season pass. But at the end of the day, some people want every skin and they feel the need to buy them as they come. That's pretty much the same as someone collecting items for a set imo. At that point, if they have the money to spend then let them spend it. If they don't, they can just play the game for the game.

@JereJK Fair enough, I guess if they really want to, I can't stop them from spending on money it, as long as the purchaser is aware of how much they have spent on the game beforehand and what they are exactly getting out of it.
I am still against microtransactions and will never support them, but I concede that they are really the only way to do a free to play economy and Fortnite is not the worst one, far from it.

Also MW3 was great as well, but my fav will always be MW2

It's a very good solution and well handled. Great call.