Fortnite’s Roblox-like user-generated content platform UEFN has paid creators $1 billion since 2023.
Earlier this year, Epic Games conducted large-scale layoffs with the spend on Fortnite being the main reason behind the mass exodus of fans. 1,000 developers across Epic Games were laid off.
“The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we’re spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced in a statement back in March.
Following the layoffs, Fortnite developers told fans that no one can “fully understand” the effects the layoffs will have “on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond”. While 1,000 developers were let go from Fortnite, including an employee suffering from terminal brain cancer, Epic has pushing to turn Fortnite into a massive Roblox competitor with UEFN, and it turns out it’s been a significant money drain.
Speaking at the State of Unreal, director of Fortnite developer relations Hannah Lowry confirmed that UEFN has paid out over $1 billion since 2023. Lowry confirmed that the $1 billion threshold was passed in January 2026, prior to the mass layoffs by Epic Games and prior to major price increases for Fortnite players.
“As of January, we’ve introduced more ways to monetize, opening up new genres and helping developers with smaller, engaged communities,” Lowry said at the State of Unreal.
In a follow-up statement, Epic Games confirmed on social media that the $1 billion payout does not include any money for Epic themselves. “100% of the $1B was paid out to third-party developers,” the studio said. “That # [number] doesn’t include Epic.”
Despite spending over $1 billion on creator payouts, Lowry also claimed that the platform is “still maturing”. Earlier this year, UEFN saw a massive expansion with the arrival of official Star Wars assets, allowing players to make bespoke Star Wars game modes within Fortnite.
This is just the start of Epic’s plan for UEFN with the upcoming Unreal Engine 6 focused on turning Unreal Engine into an online metaverse that connects Fortnite, UEFN, and third-party games. Following years of Roblox envy by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, Unreal Engine 6 is seemingly designed around the idea of turning the popular battle royale game into a platform for user-generated games.
At State of Unreal, Sweeney focused intently on the popularity of Roblox. “One view of the future is that Roblox grows and eats gaming… a centralized platform with a single gatekeeper that commoditizes all content, takes more than 70% of revenue, and has 450 million users,” the CEO said.
As of right now, UEFN maps are largely poor in quality compared to official game modes. Many of the most popular options are simply Fortnite XP maps, simple arenas designed to allow players to rapidly complete battle passes with mindless gameplay. Outside of that, clones of popular Roblox modes – such as Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot – take centre stage.
Additionally, while there are a lot of UEFN maps that do see heavy play, none are played as much as the main Fortnite game mode. The reality is, despite the push to become the next Roblox, the vast majority of Fortnite users are there for the battle royale game, Fortnite Festival, or other official game modes.
Nevertheless, the push for Fortnite to become the Roblox competitor is still underway. With Unreal Engine 6, making content for Fortnite to earn money through the game will be easier. Additionally, Fortnite skins are said to be available to use in other Unreal Engine 6 titles, seemingly allowing developers to co-opt John Wick or Spider-Man officially into their own games. Although, the legality of that process is currently completely unknown as it comes to copyright.
Alongside the issue of how this could seemingly introduce a generation of gentrified games as developers push to connect with the Fortnite ecosystem, the reality is that this UEFN future sounds increasingly expensive for Epic Games. Of course, there is a future where Epic goes the Spotify route where devs are not paid per-play of their product, but instead given a percentage of a specific monthly pool of money. Although, that will likely only happen once developers trust in the viability of UEFN as a platform.
Epic Games’ future is, undeniably, laser-focused on making UEFN the platform of the future, although it’s not quite evident yet if that’s what gamers actually want. It’s true that the upcoming generation of gamers are fixated on the platform of Roblox, but is hyper-investment enough to drag them over to Fortnite’s version?
