Epic has tried as hard as it could over the past few years to make the Fortnite Metaverse happen—and now, in late 2025, it’s actually starting to look like it’s getting there. Things are still pretty messy, but epic moves in that direction—which often involve trying random things to make it look—may eventually bear fruit.
In late 2023, Fortnite tried to launch its own metaverse into its metaverse by launching Fortnite Festival, Rocket Racing, and Lego Fortnite together. It didn’t quite work, as all three were half-baked and missing key features. The only way to play racing was in ranked, the fair lacked device support and still doesn’t have a practice mode, and Lego Fortnite had the feel of an Early Access survival game wearing Lego clothing.
Two years later, we have a very beautiful picture, but not because the epic went all the way. Instead, epics have simply been illuminating new ways, some of which have been performed permanently. Similarly, Fortnite Creative has created its first blockbuster map with any staying power. Thanks to some important legal victories, Fortnite is once again available on mobile devices in most places, dramatically increasing the game’s potential footprint. And the new cosmetic variants added last year have proven far more popular than the cars and musical instruments that were introduced in Chapter 5.
A lot happened in Fortnite over the past year. To make it a little easier to digest, let’s go through the biggest developments one by one.
Rise of the Braintrots
Fortnite’s creative side got its first real blockbuster in 2025 with a licensed clone of one of Roblox’s most popular modes. Stealing Brentor was an instant success in Fortnite, and it’s consistently averaged enough consistent players that it can compete with Epic’s battle royale methods. Now, Epic is planning to leverage BrainRoot’s success to let creators use the Unreal Editor for Fortnite to add vBucks transactions to their islands, which the Roblox version of the BrainRoot game doesn’t currently have in Fortnite.
Unfortunately, the mod’s success means that Epic has decided to focus on its marketing for Fortnite as a whole, as well as promoting it by placing it in the game’s newsfeed in general. It’s incredibly remote for those who aren’t interested in the mod—which is pretty much everyone who doesn’t already play it.
With brainstorms apparently here to stay, there’s reason to worry that Fortnite may soon be flooded with such inane nonsense aimed entirely at children. Epic has already made it unnecessarily difficult for people who just want to play BR to get past all the creative islands and other modes they don’t care about in Fortnite’s messy explore tab.
The problem is that Fortnite doesn’t offer a way to customize your exploration tab other than to pick the modes and maps you like. For example, you can’t tell that you’re not interested in stealing Brainroot, so there’s no way to avoid the noise or pretend it doesn’t exist because Epic is constantly promoting it to you. It’s not fun.
Fracture of Battle Royale
Fortnite added several new battle royale spin-off modes over the past year, starting with the permanent OG mode that revisits Chapter 1. In addition to recreating the game more or less seven years ago, this mod also got its own new Battle Pass, the OG Pass, for each of its seasons.
Then we had Blitz Royale, which arrived during the summer with a focus on mobile players thanks to its short matches on a small island. EPIC has done tons of fine-tuning on Blitz Royale since its launch, trying out all kinds of novel mechanics, like giving all players a Super Power Medallion to start a match—though since November’s launch, Blitz has been like a miniature version of the standard battle royale, without as many gimmicks. But Blitz has changed so often that it’s never had a true status—a great way to keep players interested.
Epic then followed with Delolo, a weekender with voice chat that allowed players to instantly form teams—and then cheat on each other if they wanted to.
Somehow, these new methods—complete reloads, OGs, and regular battle royales—have all managed to maintain a healthy population at the same time. They absolutely nerf each other a bit, but not so much that it affects matchmaking in any particular mode for most people. It’s hard to imagine that Epic could get away with any of the new BR modes without bumping into Fortnite’s overall population, but Epic clearly knows it too—perhaps that’s why DeLolo is only available on weekends.
Go to all celebrities
Being a rhythm game, Fortnite Festival never drew millions of consistent users over the long term the way Battle Royale does. These days, the mod has a small but dedicated player base, but the skins of pop stars in the item shop and the cosmetics associated with the seasonal music pass-through mode have clearly been a huge success for Epic, as the company has typically been doing a lot of these kinds of collabs this year.
In the past few months alone, Fortnite has introduced new collaborations with five musical artists (Deadmau 5, Daft Punk, Duja Cat, Tyler the Creator, and Playboy Carty) who weren’t festival headliners, and then Epic kicked off its new ramp-up celebrity frenzy by adding Kim Kardashian in December. Considering all these celebrity and pop star skins lately—it feels like we’re fighting Sabrina Carpenters non-stop in BR this year—you can probably expect more crossovers like this in 2026.
New virtual toys to spend money on
Epic Games has been slowly introducing new types of cosmetics over the past couple of years. Back in Chapter 5, cars, musical instruments and various Lego objects were added. Kick popped up a year ago right before the start of Chapter 6, and in 2025, we got sidekicks—specifically pets that follow us around and get excited when we do something in the game. Although the new Chapter 5 cosmetics struggled so much out of the gate that Epic had to lower some of its prices—it turned out that 4,000 V Bucks was kind of a bit much for a Fortnite car—the kicks seem to have held up well, and the side kicks are a particular hit.
Yes, there’s been a lot of skepticism about the two new cosmetic types recently added—couples who don’t stick scoff at Cook, and much disappointment that you can customize your sidekick’s appearance even before they’re permanently locked. But people are buying them anyway. It’s rare that I have a partner who doesn’t have a pet dog or cat (or chicken).
And speaking personally, as someone who’s been playing for years and has a lot of skins, I like that he can branch out with new stuff. I don’t really need many skins right now, but having the itch from The Simpsons follows me around and celebrates my kills.
Is the slope coming?
While Fortnite isn’t currently regurgitating any AI nonsense, red flags have popped up earlier this year. Epic’s most notable AI-driving creation was the Darth Vader NPC in Bit Royale during the Star Wars mini-season in May, which could respond animatedly to things players said to it, voiced by the late James Earl Jones. It was definitely awkward, but at least it was something impractical to try without Ai
Since then other obvious AI things have started popping up here and there within Fortnite. Epic gave away a free jam track in October with AI infill court art featuring Hatsune Miku—even though the track had nothing to do with Miku. Chapter 7 has a few pieces of art in this game that are commonly accused of being like a poster of a Yeti in a crowd with one of its feet having five toes while the other has four. And in a spirit of Lisa’s Music Pass, the licensed 2025 song is so obscure that no one even knows who made it—and it sounds like it’s AI-generated. Oh, and that braintrot? These are all Ai-Generated Meme designs from the Italian Brainroot phenomenon.
To be honest, it all doesn’t really add up to much. But when you take these things together with recent comments from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney—in which he said that it’s pointless for Steam if AI-assisted content is used in the development of the game because AI will soon be involved in all the work—there’s certainly reason to worry that Epic is planning to end its Endless Children adaptation. Planning to do.
