Fortnite, Worth Billions, Offering Paltry Prize Money For Design Contest - Kotaku

Players can submit skin ideas, and two winners “will have their concepts turned into in-game Outfits in Fortnite, and will also each receive a $2,500 cash prize.” At first glance it doesn’t look like a bad deal, but $2.5k for a design developer Epic can then use in perpetuity isn’t great.

“Both Outfits will make their official debut this December during Fortnite’s to-be-announced Winter 2021 event,” Epic wrote, but the contest’s description and rules don’t say what form that will take.

The specific numbers don’t matter so much—the point is, Fortnite makes Epic a lot of money, much of which comes from in-game purchases via the game’s currency, V-Bucks.

That $2500 might seem like a great windfall as a contest prize, but when you consider that it’s basically glitzed-up spec work, and you think about the money Epic could make when, as per the contest’s rules, participants give it free rein to do what it likes with their designs, things start to feel a lot less lucrative.