With the introduction of three entire new experiences – LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival – Epic’s unstoppable “everything” game Fortnite has taken a huge stride closer to becoming its own platform. But with so much new content available, the developer has to find ways to monetise it – and the latest microtransactions are attracting criticism for their obscene prices.
Perhaps chief among the backlash is the cost of the Rocket Racing vehicles, which weigh in at up to 4,000 V-Bucks apiece. Now to be fair, these include different liveries and are available in Rocket League as well, but you’re looking at a real-money investment of up to £27.99/$36.99 for one car here, although you will have about 1,000 V-Bucks leftover from your purchase.
Meanwhile, one song in Fortnite Festival will set you back about 500 V-Bucks, so you’re looking at a purchase of about £6.99/$8.99 for two (or approximately £3.50/$4.50 apiece). Elsewhere, new instrument skins, like drum kits and guitars, cost about 1,000 V-Bucks each, so an expense of £6.99/$8.99. Obviously, this is a lot of money.
Even the Festival Pass, which is a separate Battle Pass specifically for the music mode, costs 1,800 V-Bucks, which is almost double the cost of the main Battle Royale track. Perhaps the only positive here is that 1,200 skins have been converted to LEGO Fortnite for free, so you don’t have to invest extra money into that mode.
It’s clear that Epic is testing the waters here to see what it can get away with. Obviously, Fortnite is a gigantic game now, and you can experience virtually everything it has to offer without dipping into your wallet once. In that sense, it’s an incredibly generous experience. But if you do want some of the more premium cosmetics, it looks like it’s going to cost you.
Comments 38
When something is free it usually ends up costing you more!
I'm glad the kids out of his Fortnite phase, used to grind my gears when he would constantly ask for money for vbucks.
Best part of £30 for a car? Madness.
Lol glad I haven't touched Fortnite in over two years now, it's now the worst game for excessive overpriced monetisation, overtaking Destiny 2.
This is not a game 🤦
I replayed gears of war trilogy with judgement and saw this ***** from epic early on they were going to this direction, I don't bother with em today epic launcher and free games nope!
You can get TW3 + CP2077 for that money, for example
I agree it is too expensive but unfortunately history has shown that the kids (and parents) WILL pay for this kind of thing. It’s also worth remembering that this is all cosmetic stuff so you don’t have to buy anything and with 4 full fledged games now, you’re actually getting a lot of great high quality content for free. But yea TLDR, it is expensive but guess what, don’t like it, don’t buy it.
@mariomaster96 This is just sad. Hundreds of hours of fantastic and unique gameplay, worlds and stories (and probably even some insights about human nature) vs. a car model in Fortnite.
@NinjaNicky I mean, in my view the prices can still be criticised, even if they're optional.
I've no problem with Epic selling content in their game, and I even buy some of it when I'm interested. But I think 4,000 V-Bucks for one car is too much.
"Fortnite fans can't believe the price of new microtransactions"...really? They've never seen prices of some of big licensed Lego sets?!😂
Even if the skins costs 28 or 8, it will eventually all blow away in the wind after the servers gets closed down one day so it can't be that bad.
Yep, western F2P continues to be absolutely dreadful and atrocious. Worst thing is that people will still pay for all this garbage. Instead of buying an amazing $30 indie game, they'll spend $30 for a single vehicle...
What people want and what they need are two entirely different things, you don’t need to spend money to take advantage of hundreds of thousands of hours of completely free content.
My kids have put in thousands of hours in Fortnite, absolutely love the game and besides me giving them V Bucks at Xmas and birthdays they have spent nothing in game but had incredible entertainment value for precisely nothing
It's almost like Fortnite is just a money maker and the people behind it don't REALLY care about you...
I'll stick to my air guitar/pots and pans drums.
If you have the car in Rocket League, it's automatically available in Rocket Racing (of the cars presented). That was a welcome surprised when I checked it out. Also, the racing is fun. It can't compete with Rocket League, but it is a fun adjacent game.
Never change gacha games, show that sin of greed.
Worst thing ever was when players rolled over and bought add-ons. Worst yet when you pay full price for a game and still have to shell out for extra content.
Sorry, no empathy/sympathy from me. They made their bed now they can lie in it.
The Battle Royale skins are still ‘good’ value (especially now that you can use the skins in LEGO Fortnite). But the prices of the cars are outrageous. The Festival pass should be 1,000 vbucks too, not 1,800.
I have no interest in Festival and I already play Disney Speedstorm so don't need Rocket Racing but I have spent about 4 or 5 hours in Lego and honestly can't recall even seeing an option to buy anything. Not that I would, just that they don't seem to be pushing it that hard if they are.🤷♂️
$40 for a car skin seems crazy, just buy MK8D on sale for that much $. Now I think I have to go check it out just to see how hard they're pushing it. 2 years ago I spent about $8 on Fornite V-bux to get the season pass, have been rolling it over every season chapter since, currently have about 3,500, just don't see any reason to use them besides new season passes.
Can't even imagine buying songs in game but I don't play any of those music based games so not really sure how that works.
Still love FN and I even bought the Eminem skin and emote.. but everything feels so crowded now, especially the in-game store.. why they chose to release 3 big new game modes on top of a new season/map is beyond me..
And don’t get me started on that rip off of Guitar Hero.. that sh**s a joke..
Still yet though.. I don’t have to spend money but it’s crappy to add all of this ‘eye candy’ to the store at once right before Christmas.. kindve predatory really
@Dudditz09 I would my mom's response get a job.
@WolfyTn I can relate but it's with another game with every extra you have to sink in more time and you get exhausted in the end.
Near enough £30 for a car is insane.
Worst is, kids grow up with these prices and don't think anything's wrong when asking their parents for more V-Bucks xD
Yikes! So glad my kids grew out of Fortnite. I'm sure these will be changed soo accompanied by the typical copy/paste apology blog post.
This is why live service games are terrible for the industry.
People have brought this on themselves, this Cancer had been festering for a very long time and needs to be eradicated and zapped for so long, the longer it festers to longer it goes I hope there is advocates that want the same focus out there! 🫡🫡 Respect
@Nepp67 this is why epic games need to be erased from the face of the earth permently
@GuttyYZ like I said like GTA online, people let this happen and here we are, it's vile
@ATaco it's total madness at this point smdh
@Luigia that is how the system works overall and the wheel keeps on turning
Looks like I'll just end up buying less then.
Baldurs Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Spiderman 2 and millions of other games more worthy of our time are out. So let's all play them instead!
I will have more great ideas in upcoming comment drops.
They charge outrageous prices because there are idiots out there that will pay those prices for a whole lot of nothing.
@NinjaSixx Unfortunately I think we're beyond that when skins regularly already cost $20. That's at least one good game on sale, at least two on Steam.
I've played Fortnite occasionally with my daughters, but its never been my favorite of the "battle royale" genre (I am REALLY into the new Farlight 84, however). These new game modes, however, I find all incredibly fun...but I totally agree, the prices for the shop pieces for each mode (especially the cars) is pretty obscene. Yes, yes, I know...its all optional and I don't have to buy into any of them. But prices like THAT actively make me NOT want to purchase any of them, as much as I would want to use them in the various game modes. Its a shame, because there are several things I WOULD purchase from the shops for all 3 of the different modes if they weren't priced just so high.
Predatory, if it wasn't for Fortnite I'd bet games wouldn't be as bad as they are in recent years now we've seen battlefield go down the toilet and call of duty preying on their players too.
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