Fortnite Creative 2.0's beta is out, allowing for some wild custom content

Epic Games have married their two money makers, creating holy matrimony between battle-royale mainstay Fortnite and Unreal Engine 5. As part of the company’s State Of Unreal presentation, Epic unveiled Unreal Editor For Fortnite (UEFN), a UE5-powered version of the game’s Creative mode which the community has been referring to as Creative 2.0 for the past few months. UEFN is out right now in beta form, and some of what’s possible with these tools are downright wild.

For the unaware, Fortnite Creative is an in-game editor that allows players to customise their very own islands, but it was always somewhat limited. UEFN is now drastically improving Creative mode by adding several of Unreal 5’s swanky features, such as the Lumen lighting tech that was added to Fortnite in last year’s Chapter 4. It’s now more of a full-on Roblox-style custom game editor - minus the janky graphics.

If you’re not much of an in-game creator-type, the update will still benefit you since, well, it means there’ll be better player-created content for you to check out. To show off what UEFN can do, Epic partnered with creators to launch some cool stuff on day one. You can head to Fortnite’s discovery tab to check out the UEFN-made projects: Deserted: Domination, Forest Guardian, and The Space Inside.

This short clip via Twitter briefly demonstrates what the tools can do, and it’s kind of mind-blowing. Between the three projects, you have one that emulates the blockbuster military action of a Gears Of War campaign (aka Epic’s ex-boyfriend), another has a massive robot boss fight with crazy explosions flying about, and a third takes us through a Chinese mythological cave with a pretty dragon waiting at the end. I’m sure creators will have a field day recreating other video game locations. In other words, we’ll see a battle royale version of Pokemon within the week.

Epic are also revising how they compensate creators with Creator Economy 2.0 (not to be confused with Creative 2.0.) Essentially, Epic will place 40% of revenue from real-money purchases into an engagement tool and then pay eligible creators at the end of each month. You can check eligibility and revenue shares on Epic’s lengthy blog post. Long story short, islands that attract new players and retain them - or cause old players to relapse - will earn better payouts.

In January, CJ (RPS in peace) reported that Epic and Fortnite had the best shot of actually achieving every tech CEO's dream to build a metaverse future, according to a GDC survey. Epic seems to agree as they said that “These updates bring us one step closer to Epic’s vision of a connected metaverse.” So, we’re one step closer to sharing a picket fence with a lightsaber-wielding, Thanos glove-wearing, Naruto-skinned neighbour in a virtual world. If you already have a neighbour that fits said description - or if that neighbour is you - I’d very much like to see their fit.

Unreal Engine For Fortnite (or Creative 2.0) is available now, for free, on The Epic Games Store.