Hoping to play Fortnite with VR support? Bad news, Epic Games confirms there are no plans to support VR headsets.
Speaking to The Verge in a recent interview, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was questioned about Fortnite on Meta Quest headsets. He responded:
Epic has no plans to build a VR version of Fortnite. Not out of any grand business strategy, but just because the thing that we do in Fortnite every day as gamers is run through an environment rapidly, and it’s the kind of experience that involves intense motion and doesn’t work as well in VR. And so if we were to ever do anything in VR, it would have to be something that’s really custom tailored for the experience.
Elaborating further on Twitter, Sweeney reasons that introducing VR in Fortnite could fragment the user base if it required special modes. Calling the fact that “all players can play any mode together across all platforms” one of Fortnite’s biggest strengths, he believes it would be a futile exercise unless battle royales could work comfortably in VR. Continuing on, Epic’s CEO revealed the company had unsuccessfully tested VR with Unreal Tournament, claiming it “looked great” but caused too much discomfort.
He also addresses Robo Recall, Epic’s first (and currently only) VR game. Responding to a comment about VR games built from the ground up, Sweeney explains the team “embraced the idea and took it to what we felt was the limit at the time.” He wrote that now he believes games with artificial locomotion “are just way better,” writing “if VR can’t hold its own as a game-design-neutral display device, it’ll fail.”
Sweeney does believe in the wider metaverse concept also supported by Mark Zuckerberg. He told The Verge that Epic will “partner with any company on metaverse collaborations”. Sweeney also shared details on Twitter of the company’s new programming language called Verse, which Epic is “building for the metaverse”.
While Fortnite VR is not happening, there’s always Population: One for anyone after a VR battle royale fix, which gets a sandbox mode later this week.
