🎙️ How can Epic turn its $500 million investment into a UGC ecosystem that creates more value than it costs? Naavik host, David Taylor, speaks to two top Fortnite creators and influencers, Chad Mustard (aka MustardPlays) and Michael Ha (aka Birdo) to discuss this and more in this fascinating episode! - MustardPlays Fortnite journey - Birdo / MustardPlays as content creators - JOGO's / Birdo's development - Financial planning / Investment - Monetisation on Fortnite - Revenue Models - Influencers - Future developments / Tools - IP's in Fortnite We’d like to thank Heroic Labs for making this episode possible! Thousands of studios have trusted Heroic Labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about gametech or scaling for success. To learn more and reach out, make sure to visit https://lnkd.in/gwqbdtXz
Epic Games has invested $500 million to support their Fortnite creator ecosystem. However, much of this funding is exiting the ecosystem rather than being reinvested into new content. 𝟐✖ Creator payouts should really be “pay-ins” If Epic pays a creator $1M, that creator can either pocket it or put up to $1M right back into developing and marketing more content When creators reinvest their payouts into Fortnite's creator economy, a "Multiplier Effect" occurs: every dollar that Epic pays one creator for past content, goes towards producing more content. Effectively, they get up to twice the content production for the same cost. 😾 Currently, several top creators are simply pocketing this money without reinvesting into the community. One creator, Geerzy, has earned over $20 million in the last 18 months off of his island, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘪𝘵, according to Fortnite.gg, but has not made a new map in the last year, and has only updated 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘪𝘵 three times in the last four months. Features such as 'Favorites' and 'Recently Played', which are important for growing and retaining an audience, are also significant contributors to the entrenchment of older games. As players return to Fortnite for big moments - like this weekend's Fortnite Remix - they see those old games over new content. 🌱 New content is key for driving engagement and spend In early February, Roblox discovered a bug that was preventing new content from being surfaced through their algorithm. We started seeing a slow-down in bookings. When they fixed it, earnings and engagement skyrocketed. This thesis was further confirmed by Roblox's new viral sensation, 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘐𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴, which was highlighted in the company’s Q3 earnings call, where they surprised investors with bookings $124 million above guidance, marking a 34% year-over-year increase. 🎯 Epic Games needs to see more value from creators for its creator economy payouts to be sustainable. Allocating payouts to creators who are reinvesting their earnings to make more content (“pay-ins”) is low-hanging fruit for getting more content from the economy without increasing their spend. On the Naavik Gaming Podcast this week, I chatted with two top Fortnite creators who are doing just that. Birdo (Michael Ha) and MustardPlays (Chad Mustard) each have games that have generated over $5M, and they’re reinvesting most of their earnings into the Fortnite ecosystem. Link in the comments for the full interview!