LogInFor a year, developers will be earning 100% of the V-Bucks value, but there's a catch.
Epic Games
Fortnite is a great platform for creativity, and players who make their own content there will absolutely love Epic Games' new announcement. Starting in December, developers will be able to sell their items directly from their Fortnite islands.
"Developers will ordinarily earn 50% of the V-Bucks value from sales in their islands, but from December 2025 through the end of 2026, the rate will be 100%."
But if you thought Epic Games was doing charity, you're wrong, although it does say the company has been investing and operating the business at a loss in recent years.
The scheme is as follows: to determine the V-Bucks value in dollars in a given month, Epic takes all customer real-money spending to purchase V-Bucks (converted to US Dollars), subtracts platform and store fees (from 12% on Epic Games Store to 30% on current consoles), and divides it by the total V-Bucks spent by players. Fortnite's average platform and store fees are 26%, so 50% of V-Bucks value is around 37% of retail spending, and 100% of V-Bucks value translates to about 74%.
TL;DR: developers will be getting approximately 74% of the money they earn from selling items.
"Developers will use a Verse-based API and new UEFN tools to create and offer purchasable durable items and consumable items in their games."
Moreover, Fortnite creators will continue to receive payouts depending on player engagement in their islands. "The engagement payout formula places 40% of the net revenue from Fortnite’s Item Shop and related real-money purchases into the engagement pool."
Epic will update the engagement payout formula on November 1: creators who bring in new or lapsed players will receive 75% of those players’ contributions to the engagement payout pool for their first six months. Signals from direct links, in-game search usage, and first-day playtime patterns will play a role when attributing players to an island.
"Additionally, the retention component of engagement payouts will now reward island-specific retention, rather than ecosystem-wide retention to better align with creators’ own efforts in growing this metric."
The engagement payout formula will only consider players who have made purchases on their accounts to combat fraudulent engagement, which will not reduce the engagement payout pool, but shift the calculation so that playtime from non-payers is not considered.
The engagement payout formula now covers minutes played, new user acquisition, lapsed user acquisition, playtime surrounding V-Bucks spend, and island retention.
Furthermore, in November, Epic will add a Sponsored Row in Discover so creators can pay to increase visibility for their islands. In the long run, 50% of sponsorship revenue generated by Sponsored Row will go into the engagement payout pool. From launch through the end of 2026, this rate will be 100%.
Finally, starting November 17, creators will be able to set up campaigns in the Creator Portal, bid on placement, and get used to the tools. "Creators will easily be able to adjust their spend to meet their goals, whether that’s maintaining a small player base for iterating on early content or supporting a major island launch or update." On November 24, the new Sponsored Row section will go live in Discover.
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