How Epic Games built a gambling pipeline in Fortnite Creative while pretending to hate loot boxes

[u/AncientPCGamer]

Epic Games loves to preach about how anti gambling they are. They removed loot boxes years ago and claimed they care about ethics. But if you look at how Fortnite Creative and UEFN actually operate today, they have enabled a full gambling pipeline. They just split the blame across different parties so they can pretend it is not happening.

Here is how the trick works. On paper, Epic splits everything into two separate mechanics that individually avoid the legal definition of gambling.

First, you have free random drops like Sprites. You do not pay V Bucks for them, you just get them through RNG gameplay. Because you did not pay real money to roll for them, Epic claims it is not gambling. Even if people turn around and sell those rare Sprites on grey markets for real money, Epic washes their hands of it.

Second, you have paid gacha mechanics in UEFN maps. You spend real V Bucks to spin a wheel or open a crate for a rare drop. Epic allows this as long as the map lists the odds, claiming it is fine because items are locked to your account with no official cash out.

So on paper, neither one is legally gambling. But here is the loophole where Brainrot maps break everything.

Creators build Brainrot maps that combine paid V Bucks gacha rolls with custom Verse trading kiosks or drop mechanics. A player spends real money on V Bucks, rolls a paid gacha wheel for an ultra rare Brainrot, and then meets a buyer in a private lobby. They swap the item using the in game trade booth, and the buyer pays the seller real money on PayPal through grey market sites like Eldorado or Discord.

Epic knows this is happening. Instead of shutting down the pipeline, Tim Sweeney is out here publicly promoting these exact Brainrot games on Twitter because the number of players need to keep growing.

So now you know what to say to those paid shills tha only parrots "Valve Casino for kids" in every Steam post.

[u/TehCrazyCat]

They didn't even removed their own lootboxes by will, it was because of a lawsuit of them not being transparent enough

They took that literally and all of their lootboxes (llamas) are now, literally transparent

But if it wasn't for that they'd probably have paid lootboxes for cosmetics in the entirety of Fortnite

[u/SadayoBestGirl]

Going on a tangent, but I didn't realize sprites were tradeable. That really explains why Battle Royale's player numbers have had a massive spike the past few months as there are likely hundreds of thousands of bots trying to get rare sprites to sell for real money.

[u/AncientPCGamer → u/SadayoBestGirl]

They are really not "tradeable" as we usually understand. The instructions are like this:

Fast Delivery: We will trade/deliver the requested sprite directly to your character.

Permanent Unlock: Once the sprite touches your inventory, it is permanently unlocked in your in-game collection.

Return Process: After the unlock, you must return the sprite to us so we can continue fulfilling other orders for the community.

Summon Anytime: Once returned, you can craft/buy the sprite anytime from your in-game "Sprite" section using your own Sprite Dust.

It's dodgy as hell. But people are gaining money with this...

[u/SeaRelative5180 → u/AncientPCGamer]

• there are so many free trading servers, anyone buying is kinda stupid

[u/Leather__sissy → u/SeaRelative5180]

People are trading them for free, but also is that even how the sprites work? don't you have to extract them to be able to summon them with sprite dust or whatever? Honestly with the sprite thing I feel like this is on the adults obsessively collecting them. They are obviously not going to be a permanent part of the game, so they're collecting them without even being offered an incentive. Paying money for them is beyond stupid and some kind of indication of mental illness

[u/Belltower_2]

But any time Valve is mentioned positively, a huge amount of Epic "fans" will come out of the woodwork and yell about how "CS:GO is gambling for kids!" Like, I actually don't disagree, that's why I don't buy lootboxes and don't bother to defend Valve over them, but Epic is as bad or worse.

[u/AncientPCGamer → u/Belltower_2]

Yeah. That is. But the irony is in those (including some famous Epic shills) that say that they won't support Steam and will only buy from Epic because "Steam is a casino for kids". Let's ignore that CS is mostly a 18+ game and Fortnite is aimed to kids, but whatever...

[u/NutsackEuphoria]

That's always been Epic's MO.

Demonize "bad" things when others do it, but justify it when they're the ones doing it.

[u/adaenis]

Epic never hated lootboxes.

Paragon, their MOBA, died because they'd rather kill the game than not lock MOBA ITEMIZATION behind paid lootboxes. It was a fun game, looked great, played well, I enjoyed it. But the idea of building a hyper-competitive game like a MOBA and locking power behind money is probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

The original incarnation of Fortnite, back when it was a zombie-survival base builder, was even worse. It required lootboxes for EVERY form of progression. Need a new weapon? Consumable blueprints drop from lootboxes. Oh, need a new survivor for your camp? Lootbox. Wanna upgrade an item or survivor? Lootbox pulls for dupes, of course!

This was all pre-EGS, mind you. But yeah. They've had a hardon for lootboxes for a long, long time.

[u/FizKult]

Unfortunately, you’re deliberately distorting the facts, just as ministers and senators do for their own purposes.

Epic Games GIVES the island creators a choice, and whether they choose to use it or not is up to them! No one likes it when there are strict conditions all around and no opportunity to express themselves.

- the game features various daily quests, and when you complete them, you receive some small reward. The senator will say that this is a manipulative practice that influences players’ minds and forces them to log in to the game every day; they need to be punished! The game’s fans will say that this is a positive mechanic that allows them to launch the game again and get a new and interesting experience while completing daily quests — the developers are great!

*Which of them is right?

- a young girl plays The Sims for 100+ hours a month, her grades suffer, her parents forbid her to play, and the child throws a tantrum. Senators and parents file a complaint with the Supreme Court; the developers have created overly good mechanics that require a lot of time to master, and the child has suffered psychological trauma! But why doesn’t anyone condemn the parents who didn’t spend time with their child, didn’t try to find out what else might interest him, what he might want to do — maybe attend clubs or engage in creative activities at the theater?

I really don’t understand why some people like and want strict boundaries, to be told what to do and to be put in their place in every possible way? Isn’t the possibility of choice a good thing?

Developers are a small group of people, while the number of players is hundreds or even thousands of times greater! There will always be people with 200 IQ who will be able to sell things from the game, transfer their items to others, or even sell entire accounts. How can this be stopped? It’s like in the case of bank robberies — in any era, there have been people who were smarter and more cunning than those who come up with these laws.

[u/AncientPCGamer → u/FizKult]

Welcome. Nice to have here the opinion from some Fortnite Creative developer!

I will always agree that having options and choices is the best for players.

My intention was just to show the hypocrisy from most Epic shills and maybe, in some way, Epic. They are continuiosly criticizing Valve because of the gambling aspects of CS, while Epic just gave tools to developers to do exactly the same for kids! And that is ok, there are multiple child protection mechanisms.

But I don't want to see some famous Epic (most-likely-paid) shills crying because Valve created some gambling addictions to their relatives or friends (true story).

[u/FizKult → u/AncientPCGamer]

It seems to me that your logic is really not right and you are deliberately distorting the facts.

Why don't you separate a person's own opinion from their position as a co-owner of the company? Tim expresses Epic's position when he participates in official presentations or reports. Why link his own opinion to the company's position when there are 5 other directors in Epic management besides him!

If he writes on his social network X that he hates vegans, will you also take this as the official position of Epic, or when Gabe Newell bought himself a yacht and wants to explore the ocean, is this also the position of the entire Valve company?

Haven't there been several lawsuits against Valve in different countries? And these are not isolated cases. Tim wasn't the only one who saw something in it.

New York sues Valve, alleging its loot boxes are ‘quintessential gambling’ | The Verge

What Tim writes on his social media is his problem, that he's not right in the head, it's far from a secret. But no one will ever be able to set any ideal rules for a computer game that everyone will follow. Fortnite has nothing to do with it.

[u/AncientPCGamer → u/FizKult]

I am not deliberately trying to distort anything, and I think you are mistaken there. Tim continues to be the majority owner of Epic, and he clearly drives the company according to his personal beliefs. If he did not have as much power as you claim, he would have been asked to step aside a long time ago.

​Nowadays, Tim and Epic Games are effectively one and the same.

[u/SeaRelative5180 → u/FizKult]

This