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Epic Games Pins ‘Fortnite’ Comeback on Disney Partnership

The company is pinning a resurgence on games it’s been developing with Walt Disney Co., which agreed to invest $1.5 billion in Epic two years ago. Epic is on track to launch the first game in its new Disney partnership in November, according to four current and former employees. It will be a shooting game along the lines of Embark Studios’ hit Arc Raiders, but with Disney characters battling enemies until they can reach an extraction point, according to the people. So far, internal reviewers have expressed concerns that the game mechanics are not very original, but some of the employees are optimistic that Epic will get it right by the launch date.

The Disney deal will reap at least two more games, the people said. Early versions of the second title received middling internal reviews, according to two of the people. Resources for the third game were reallocated to the first two after reports that Disney was disappointed by Epic’s release timeline.
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Putting your eggs in the Disney basket and hoping it will save you is also a major choice. They constantly collaborated with Disney and its IPs, sure maybe not Mickey and the gang, but I really doubt they can attract much more of the Disney audience who were not attracted by all the other collabs over the years.

And who the heck wants a Disney Extraction shooter? I swear, Epic sees what is popular and copies it without understanding why its popular. It worked out extremely well for FN, but I do not think they really understand how or why it did there some days, or at least, the leadership/executive level does not...
 
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Epic Games Pins ‘Fortnite’ Comeback on Disney Partnership​


The company is pinning a resurgence on games it’s been developing with Walt Disney Co., which agreed to invest $1.5 billion in Epic two years ago. Epic is on track to launch the first game in its new Disney partnership in November, according to four current and former employees. It will be a shooting game along the lines of Embark Studios’ hit Arc Raiders, but with Disney characters battling enemies until they can reach an extraction point, according to the people. So far, internal reviewers have expressed concerns that the game mechanics are not very original, but some of the employees are optimistic that Epic will get it right by the launch date.
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Resources for the third game were reallocated to the first two after reports that Disney was disappointed by Epic’s release timeline.
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Epic routinely released products in what some employees called “Version 0.5,” the people said, suggesting they were only half ready.
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Users would frequently log onto the store for Epic’s free game promotions before bouncing back to Steam, said two former employees with knowledge of store operations. Epic said it’s reinvesting in and improving the store and looks forward to when it launches across all platforms.
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Last year, the Epic Games Store attracted a record 78 million monthly active users on PCs, and player spending on non-Epic games reached $400 million, according to the company. That was “lower than our growth expectations at launch,” according to Markman, but the company is “committed to making improvements to the store and to the economic opportunity for developers to grow it further.” The company’s store for mobile users has 50 million installs, according to Epic — half of what the company had hoped to achieve by the end of 2024. Apple’s “scare screens and barriers” made it “intentionally hard for players to download an alternative app store in the [European Union],” Markman said. Today, the store’s scale is “in line with our expectations,” but expansion will depend on Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems opening up, she said.
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Two developers said Epic routinely mass-deleted the company’s backlog of bug reports despite them not being resolved.
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Sweeney, who is also deeply involved in day-to-day operations, was known to change his priorities quickly, which sometimes left employees scrambling to deliver products on time, or in a polished state.
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E: not fast enough
 
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Pinning your company on a Disney extraction shooter sounds like the most Epic thing possible. The article mentions that feedback has been average and that the game is unoriginal.

They're nothing but a bunch of trend chasers and have been like that their entire existence. They got lucky once with battle royale taking off due to PUBG running like ass and its weird console release and I don't know if lightning can strike twice.
 
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Someone brought up a good point about it being a Star Wars extraction shooter. It could also be Marvel, Alien, Predator, or Aliens vs Predator (vs Humans).

There was an extraction shooter called Level Zero Extraction that came out previously that had the concept of multiple humans roaming around and collecting loot while trying to evade AI controlled aliens and 2 human controlled aliens that had unlimited lives. I could see an extraction game with humans vs 1 xenomorph vs 2 predators or something
 
Bugs != Improvements though. He just had to slip "improvements" into the tweet to make it sound like they aren't only closing bug reports.
 
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Either she got let go for doing a terrible job firing notable senior devs and having a PR blunder with the terminally ill person, or she got a golden parachute for doing a job well done.
 
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Arc said:
Either she got let go for doing a terrible job firing notable senior devs and having a PR blunder with the terminally ill person, or she got a golden parachute for doing a job well done.
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Or she finally got tired of Sweeney's eternal whining. 😉
 
lashman said:
www.ign.com

The Epic Games Store Is Getting Another Rework Later This Year, But It Probably Won't Be Enough to Dethrone Steam

www.ign.com www.ign.com
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It's a very verbose article that's missing a lot of context regarding how Epic has kept using failing stratefies instead of catering to customers. It even fails to say that this very point. It's so superficial I wish I hadn't read it.

There's no comment on the exclusivities strategy. No comment on injecting epic's multiplayer platform library to try yo create more epic accounts. No comment on how game updates are not automated (or are they?)

An article that's supposed to highlight the failing strategies that epic has tried to use lure in customers should do more than mention 12%, and these are actually hostile to customers instead if trying to cater to them.
 
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Fortnite and PUBG had virtually the same peak CCU yesterday and that's including all the UGC brainrot slop. Now Fortnite will do >2 million peak CCU this weekend thanks to Steal the Brainrot's weekly event, but oof.
 
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Arc said:
Fortnite and PUBG had virtually the same peak CCU yesterday and that's including all the UGC brainrot slop. Now Fortnite will do >2 million peak CCU this weekend thanks to Steal the Brainrot's weekly event, but oof.
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turntables GIF
 
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Fortnite's April 2026 average player count was the second lowest since Epic started showing public stats ~3 years ago (that stupid Brainrot game skews the peak concurrent upward and makes things look rosier than they are).

That's after the new season and returning to Google Play. At least they've got Disney Tarkov coming to save the day.
 
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Arc said:
View attachment 1429

Fortnite's April 2026 average player count was the second lowest since Epic started showing public stats ~3 years ago (that stupid Brainrot game skews the peak concurrent upward and makes things look rosier than they are).

That's after the new season and returning to Google Play. At least they've got Disney Tarkov coming to save the day.
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If things don’t turn around I imagine we’ll see more layoffs in Epic’s future.
 
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I really thought returning to Google Play would give them a permanent uplift in player count. The first week looked rosy as it was topping the Play charts in basically every region in the Americas, Europe and Japan. I guess there was just a groundswell of existing players who wanted to grab it on mobile and they didn't attract many new users.
 
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Arc said:
I really thought returning to Google Play would give them a permanent uplift in player count. The first week looked rosy as it was topping the Play charts in basically every region in the Americas, Europe and Japan. I guess there was just a groundswell of existing players who wanted to grab it on mobile and they didn't attract many new users.
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All the kids are too busy playing Roblox to download Fortnite.
 
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CommodoreKong said:
All the kids are too busy playing Roblox to download Fortnite.
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www.theverge.com

Roblox’s daily users continue to drop as age checks slow growth

What’s next for Roblox?
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

Roblox’s daily active users continued to slip last quarter due in part to its rollout of age checks on its platform. According to its latest earnings report, Roblox currently has 132 million daily active users globally, down from 144 million at the end of last year, which was a drop from 152 million in Q3 2025.
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Roblox is declining as well and I've noticed Steam's growth has slowed a lot lately (but I'm attributing that more to RAMageddon as fewer people are buying new computers which means fewer potential new Steam users).

Gaming is doomed. I guess we'll all go gamble on Kalshi and subscribe to our favorite OnlyFans pages. :pensive-face:
 
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