Now, parts of this debate can obviously be attributed to simple preferences. Some people like building in Fortnite, and some people don’t like building in Fortnite. It’s really not more complicated than that. 

However, as you may have gathered from some of those tweets, the temporary removal of Fortnite’s building options touches upon a bigger issue in the game’s “culture.” Specifically, it highlights the divide between those who feel that being truly skilled in Fortnite means being an expert builder and those who feel that Fortnite’s building mechanics belittle the importance of movement, aiming, and other “pure” shooter skills. Some also argue that it’s pretty clear that building is just a part of the Fortnite experience at this point and not eventually learning to use it probably means you’re better off playing a different game. 

We’ll obviously leave it up to everyone to determine which side they fall on in this particular debate, but the biggest talking point at this time isn’t the “building vs. no building” debate itself but rather what Epic Games is going to do about this whole thing. 

Maybe Epic thought that releasing a version of Fortnite without building might just show everyone that they don’t want that feature removed as much as they think they do, but it turns out that quite a few people are suddenly dreading having to return to Fortnite as it was. Much like how the release of World of Warcraft Classic left a lot of legacy WoW players realizing they hadn’t been truly excited about that game in quite some time, this “new” version of Fornite has left a lot of people looking at the base game even more venomously than they once did.

So what should Epic do now? Some are suggesting that they should just release a “no-building” mode as a permanent addition to Fortnite, which is a seemingly ideal compromise that comes with quite a few notable catches. Not only would that potentially divide the game’s massive community (and leave those on the fence in search of a home), but as we’ve seen with other live service games, introducing a “legacy” mode often doesn’t work as well as everyone hopes it will. More often than not, the spin-off mode is treated as an aside while the main mode is given the bulk of the attention. Indeed, Fortnite’s own Arena mode has often suffered from that problem. 

As many are also quickly realizing, Fortnite isn’t necessarily designed to fully support the “no-building” playstyle, and turning that into a separate mode may mean needing to treat that mode like a separate game. Epic certainly seems to have the resources needed to develop and grow both modes equally, but do they believe it’s in their best interest to do so? 

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