Fortnite is making its original Save the World mode free-to-play as Epic readjusts prices and tries to deal with dwindling engagement

There’s trouble brewing at Tilted Towers. Fortnite remains “the biggest game in the world”, per Epic Games, years after its battle royale mode blew up and following an aggressive expansion via different game modes, ambitious live events, and endless big-IP collaborations. Interest is starting to dwindle slowly but steadily, however, and Epic Games seems to be rushing to reinforce its golden goose before it’s too late.

Only yesterday, 10th March, we reported on the price changes coming soon to V-Bucks, Fortnite’s premium currency. Now, Epic has just announced the Save the World mode we often forget about is going free-to-play. It’s a big deal for a variety of reasons, with the main one being that Save the World was the original Fortnite experience, one with a buy-in price. If you remember, before PUBG turned online shooters upside down, Epic’s cartoony third-person shooter was meant to be a co-op experience with crafting elements.

Much of that survived and made its way into Fortnite BR, but for the most part, Save the World has remained in the background for years, with most of Epic Games’ development resources going into the hugely popular battle royale experience, its spinoff modes, and even entirely different genre experiments like Festival. Now, it’s going wide on 16th April:

What would’ve been registered as an overdue evolution of the biggest ‘game of games’ in the world is now yet another sign that Epic Games needs to make sweeping changes as Fortnite grows older and interest in the entire operation naturally begins to diminish. Its success remains enviable, as it stands triumphant over an ever-growing graveyard of failed live-service games, but how long can Epic ride a single game that’s built on bones which, frankly, aren’t that original? How much can goodwill and (costly) raw IP power carry it?

For now, Epic hopes players (both BR vets and newcomers) will register through the official site to check out Save the World come 16th April. To sweeten the deal, rewards for three milestones (300k, 700k, and 1 million registered players) are being offered. They’re blurred out at the time of writing, but we can see they’re a banner, a spray, and the Snowstrike Hero skin.

Fortnite: Save the World will be available across all current platforms with access to Fortnite (including Switch 2), with the only exceptions being smartphones, tablets, and Switch 1.