Fortnite would be a strange entity in any other era of gaming. It is not a game that exists statically, it changes over time, and very quickly. New locations like Coral Castle spring up just as quickly as old locations like Risky Reels vanish. And that's just the world inside the game itself.
The structure of Fortnite is very different now than the early days of the game. At first, as it transitioned from a zombie survival game, it was a fairly bare bones battle royale. Now it encompasses live events, a season pass, and its own economy. Like many games these days, there are microtransactions for the game's currency V-Bucks, which can be used to buy cosmetic items.
Epic Games announced today that those purchases will get a bit easier from now on. In the "Fortnite Mega Drop," many V-Buck prices and real life prices are being permanently lowered. These permanent discounts go up to 20%, meaning the discounts could range from small to large. Presumably every transaction involving real life money has lowered at least a little. It will certainly make gifting a Battle Pass easier, for anyone looking to get a close friend into Fortnite.
For players who stick to free cosmetics like the new Hulk Smash pickaxe, this change may not make a huge difference. For other players however, this will be a major boon. Many of the flashiest and more interesting cosmetics are only available for V-Bucks. At least one more free one is making its way to the game along with the discounts however: all players will be receiving a Shooting Star Staff pickaxe.
On top of that, anyone who bought V-Bucks within the past month will get a V-Bucks bonus equivalent to what they would have saved in real money. The bonus Bucks should roll out by August 17th. The last major change is an alternate pay method on mobile devices. With the new Epic direct payment, players can bypass the Apple App Store payment and the Google Play payment methods. This will let players (and Epic) fly like Fortnite's cars right over the 30% extra Apple and Google charge for the transaction. The players pay less and, no doubt, so does Epic itself.
If the discounts really are permanent like Epic says, then it's a very nice move on their part. The discounts aren't huge, so Epic is unlikely to lose a huge amount of revenue. It is also unlikely to stop people from spending huge amounts on the game, just a little less in the grand scheme of things. But it's still a nice gesture, especially now when players cannot afford to spend as much on games. Epic has consistently tended to its community after all, including the recent acknowledgement of the Fortnite car glitch. Whether any more perma-discounts are coming in the future only time will tell, but players probably shouldn't expect anything this big again for a long time.
Fortnite is free-to-play on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions in development.
Source: Epic Games