By Joel Loynds,Paul McNally

Copyright escapistmagazine

Epic Games has just announced a huge change to the Fortnite ecosystem that will allow developers and creators to sell items directly from their own Fortnite islands. All of these items must be digital, so there is no turning Fortnite into an Etsy store – your t-shirts will have to go elsewhere. But if you do create something digital you would like to sell, you are probably wondering how much you will be able to make from hawking produce in the game. This is where it gets slightly confusing (spoiler: the house always wins). Epic Games says that while developers will ordinarily get 50% of the V-Bucks value from sales, starting December for one year until December 26, the going rate will actually be the full 100%, which is pretty wild. Or is it? The press release reads: “To determine the V-Bucks value in US dollars in a given month, the company totals all customer real-money spending on V-Bucks (converted to US dollars) and then subtracts platform and store fees. These can range from 12% on the Epic Game Store to 30% on current consoles. Epic Games then divides this by the total V-Bucks spent by Fortnite players.” Confused? Probably. According to Gamesindustry.biz, in the first year, that means you can expect to net 74% of the cut, but after year one, this will drop to a not-so-tasty 37%. Epic Games justifies this thus: “The funds that don’t go back to creators contribute to server hosting costs, safety, and moderation costs, R&D and other operating expenses,” Epic Games said. “In recent years, Epic has been investing and operating the business at a loss.”