Players raced to be the first to remake Fortnite Chapter 1’s OG map when Creative 2.0 launched, but Epic Games is putting a stop to reliving the past from here on.
Creative players have awaited Unreal Editor for Fortnite since Creative 2.0 was teased by leakers in the community. This new suite of tools would allow players to go outside the realm of Fortnite assets by importing their own custom models into the editor.
And as we saw moments after UEFN was announced, players began racing to be the first to recreate the Fortnite Chapter 1 island. It’s been roughly three and a half years since Fortnite left the Chapter 1 map behind, and players have been begging for it to return.
Despite the anticipation for a full recreation of the OG map, Epic Games has released a statement putting an end to recreating any of the maps from Chapters 2 and 3. And players who manage to remake the Fortnite Chapter 1 map aren’t able to earn a profit.
According to a blog post from Epic Games, Islands recreating Chapter 1 maps will remain ineligible for monetization BUT Epic is granting a special and specific exception to allow creators to publish their own remakes of the Chapter 1 maps (and only the Chapter 1 maps)
— iFireMonkey (@iFireMonkey) March 24, 2023
Epic Games dissuades OG Fortnite Map creators
The news came in the form of a blog post titled, “Updating terms to enable publishing versions of battle royale Chapter 1 Islands.” Epic Games pointed out that players could not use someone else’s IP to create monetized content in UEFN and stated, “All the seasonal variations of Fortnite’s Battle Royale maps and islands are Epic’s intellectual property.”
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The blog went on to state that players were free to recreate versions of the Fortnite Chapter 1 map, but they could not monetize the maps. Under Fortnite’s Creator Economy 2.0 terms, creators no longer make money via Creator Codes. Instead, they earn real-money rewards based on how much players engage with their content.
However, players cannot earn Engagement Payouts from any Chapter 1 map remakes.
Last night Epic released a statement regarding creative maps of previous Battle Royale chapters:– Epic allows players to create Chapter 1 maps, but they do NOT allow other Battle Royale chapter maps!– Maps recreating old versions of Battle Royale maps can not be monetized pic.twitter.com/gZBhWFayaB
— Shiina (@ShiinaBR) March 24, 2023
The blog continued, stating players could only make remakes of the Chapter 1 maps, barring them from recreating maps from Chapters 2 & 3. Players in the community speculated that this was likely due to the amount of licensed content around the maps in later chapters.
As it stands, players can access Fortnite OG maps through creative mode, but creators have little incentive to develop these maps further. And those who want to play on Chapter 2 & 3 maps… well, you’re out of luck.