Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that Fortnite had a huge impact on the gaming industry. It was a title that put the pressure on Sony for cross-play, it inspired devs to create their own takes on the Battle Royale craze, and it proved that you just don’t need to take gaming so seriously all the time – sometimes, you just gotta dance around in a dino onesie. We get it. So imagine then after witnessing this game blow up and become a multi-billion dollar franchise a world where Epic Games ended up cancelling it? Because that’s almost what happened.
Former Epic Games production director Rod Fergusson revealed to Game Informer recently that Fortnite was nearly axed in the early stages of creation. Apparently, many of the devs weren’t totally onboard with the challenges and the Save the World campaign and because of that, they thought Fortnite wouldn’t do well and that it would be a colossal waste of time.
Boy, were they wrong.
“Fortnite, when it was Save the World, [was a] project that just had some challenges.” Fergusson mentioned. “As director of production at the time, that game would not have passed my bar for something we should continue to keep going.” When asked whether he feels bad about not being part of Fortnite’s success, he laughingly concludes that fans are ultimately the ones that should feel fortunate, saying, “that game you love that’s a worldwide sensation would not exist had I stayed at Epic.”
Now Fergusson is no longer in his previous position, instead having moved onto The Coalition with the Gears of War franchise. Still, it’s crazy to imagine a world without Fortnite – that free-to-play game has taken over in a big way. From gaming events, to mainstream television. It seems that everyone and their mothers are doing the flossing dance in homage to battle royale.
