Fortnite Raising Prices, Cutting Bonus Rewards To Help ‘Pay Bills’

Epic Games needs some extra cash to help pay all the bills associated with Fortnite. The developer announced that to help cover costs, it is raising the price of V-Bucks (the multi-game platform’s in-game currency), as well as reducing the number of V-Bucks that Fortnite Crew subscribers get each month, and removing the bonus currency rewards from the main battle pass. It’s not all bad news, though. All of the game’s various passes are getting a bit cheaper as well.

On Tuesday, Epic announced that starting March 19, players will get fewer V-Bucks when buying the in-game premium currency. Here’s the complete breakdown:

Epic is also raising the cost for players buying an exact amount of V-Bucks in increments of 50. It will soon cost $1 to buy 50 V-Bucks in this way. Before, it was just $0.50. Epic confirmed that previously purchased V-Buck gift cards will still provide the printed amount.

Meanwhile, people who are subscribed to Fortnite’s monthly Crew membership will no longer get 1,000 V-Bucks a month. Instead, they’ll get 800. Epic is also removing all the 500 bonus V-Bucks from the main battle pass that you could earn for finishing it and all its bonus reward tiers.

There is some good news. The main battle pass will now cost 800 V-Bucks instead of 1,000. The game’s other three passes are also getting 200 V-Bucks price drops, too.

• ●The OG Pass will cost 800 V-Bucks (previously 1,000). 
• ●The Music Pass will cost 1,200 V-Bucks (previously 1,400).
• ●The LEGO Pass will cost 1,200 V-Bucks (previously 1,400).

“The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot, and we’re raising prices to help pay the bills,” explained Epic in the March 10 blog post announcing the price increase.

While I don’t doubt that running an online video game as big as Fortnite likely costs more today than it did a few years ago, I’m not convinced Epic is struggling to pay the bills. The timing of this announcement is also a bit eyebrow-raising, as Epic recently got Google to settle in a long-fought legal case that will allow the company and others to make their own app stores available on the Google Play Store and use third-party payment systems, which should, in theory, help devs keep extra money in their pocket. Before that, Epic also scored a similar victory against Apple in the EU.  You’d think prices might go down on V-Bucks moving forward, but apparently not!