Epic Games is launching a set of tools for Unreal Editor for Fortnite that’ll let players create their own Lego islands. Epic and Lego announced the tools during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
A bunch of Lego assets are now available within the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, alongside four templates to play with. Additionally, Lego has also created three of its own Fortnite islands: Lego Prop Hunt, a Lego take on the hide and seek-esque prop hunt set in a shopping mall; Lego Battle Arena, a Ninja-themed competition; and Lego Cat Island Adventure, an island where you’re tasked with taking care of a sweet little cat. Everything built in Fortnite must have an ESRB rating of E10+ or PEGI 7 — basically, they’ve got to comply with Fortnite’s family friendly rules.
These are in addition to Lego Raft Survival and Lego Obby Fun from February.
“Today’s announcement is a hugely important step in us democratizing creativity and putting the power of the LEGO brand into creators’ hands like never before,” Lego Game head of play and creator growth Kari Vinther Nielsen said in a statement. “We want kids and families to be able to enjoy a whole host of fun and engaging play experiences within Fortnite, and the potential this news offers for creators is incredibly exciting — we can’t wait to see what everyone builds and how much the community enjoys the creations.”
Lego Fortnite went live in late 2023 and has continued to grow since then, part of of Lego’s $1 billion investment into Fortnite maker Epic Games.
Though Fortnite has millions less players than Roblox — 100 million to 250 million monthly players, respectively — Epic is aiming to be the next leader in user-generated content. Giving players the ability to create their own games and experiences means Fortnite, like Roblox, is more than just a game. It’s a platform. To incentivize players to create on Fortnite, Epic gives 40% of its net revenues back to creators in what it calls “Creator Economy 2.0.” Epic issues payments based off “popularity, engagement, retention, [and] attracting new players,” Epic executive vice president of Fortnite Saxs Persson said in 2023.
Epic and Lego’s investment into user-generated content for Fortnite is another serious push into taking on the likes of Roblox and Minecraft, and perhaps, a sign of what’s to come in the future — more overall industry investment in a new way of creating. Adopt Me creator and Roblox developer Josh Ling told GameDiscover.co in May 2023 that the wider video game industry has “little” understanding of user-generated content on Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox.
“There were 8 million peak concurrent players on Roblox last weekend,” Ling said. “The 2 top Roblox games regularly have half a million [CCU] each. I think most people think these platforms are undercooked, and I get it: Minecraft is block punching, Fortnite is Naruto hitting the griddy, and the average Roblox game has the aesthetics of a Lego game on PS2. But these are real platforms with real players — real toolsets that offer real value. Roblox’s [integrated development environment] is closer to Unity than it is to Scratch or Twine.”
Lego islands in Fortnite is a no-brainer for creator-driven content — brick building translates perfectly into the digital environment — and Epic’s new tools means Fortnite can capitalize on that.
Update: We’ve updated this story with a new Fortnite player count and tweaked the headline and text throughout.
