Recent leaks suggest that Epic Games is looking to expand what it can offer through the Fortnite Crew subscription.
A Fortnite leaker, @iFiremonkey on Twitter, posted images related to a survey that asked players to rank what features they would like to see added to the Fortnite Crew subscription. While this doesn’t say exactly what Epic is hoping to add to Fortnite, it does offer at least some information about what they’ve been debating internally.
What could Fortnite offer that makes $12 a month seem like a fair price?
It’s difficult to effectively claim how much digital goods are worth, despite previous attempts at answering just this. This difficulty comes from the fact that digital goods, by their very nature, have a very limited value. Technically, whether a player spends $40 or just $4 on digital goodies in Fortnite, they will still have the exact same worth in the real world.
Further complicating this matter is the fact that those purchased digital goods can’t even be traded or sold within the confines of Fortnite, and account selling is against the terms of service.
And yet, Epic pays highly-skilled artists, animators, and programmers tens of thousands of dollars to make these digital goods. Furthermore, Epic is the one who assigns a price to these goods and it tells players both how much something is “worth” and sells them the means to buy it, when in reality the product is always the same.
It’s a bizarre situation, the work done developing these products has immense value, but the products themselves, once sold, have almost none. Any buyer can resell a can of beans or a shirt they bought, but no one can resell their Fortnite skins no matter how impressive they are.
So what could Fortnite offer that’s worth $12 a month? Well, it really depends on who’s paying and how much each individual cares about what’s being offered. It’s all very personal and emotional, and therefore entirely up to each purchaser in question.
Fortnite sweetens the deal
The reason it’s important to keep in mind the difficulties of evaluating digital goods is because no matter what Epic offers for money, the trade is always the same—players trade real world money for untradable, intangible digital goods.
According to the leaks, Epic is looking to add other benefits to the deal. These benefits include:
- Custom matchmaking options
- Increased number of players for Creative Islands
- Increased number of Creative Islands
- Multi-month purchase options
- Account profile flair
- Cloud-based replay with unlimited storage
- Exclusive types of cosmetics
- Monthly physical mailer with additional rewards
- Exclusive player experiences
- Cosmetics that show off subscription tenure
- Giftable subscriptions
- Retail purchase options (e.g. Being able to buy Fortnite Crew memberships in stores)
These options are mostly more digital features, the kinds of things some players will care deeply about and others won’t care at all for. Other options include giving players more ways to pay Epic for the privilege of buying a Fortnite Crew subscription, or specialized options that help them advertise the Fortnite Crew subscription for those eager to pay for the right to advertise for a multi-billion dollar company.
A few of these offer real world value to the subscription, which would be interesting. Cloud-based storage for replays is a real, valuable service that some players will care about, and a physical mailer would at least be a way for players to take their love for the game with them into real life (and could be sold on secondary markets).
While most people won’t care about these other options, these could tip the scales and make more people interested in picking up a Fortnite Crew subscription. At the end of the day, how everyone spends their own money is ultimately and only their own responsibility.
Published 16 Jan 2021, 03:08 IST
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