Fortnite announces a major change to its Battle Passes, also affecting LEGO, Festival, and Rocket Racing

Epic Games is bringing a big change to Fortnite and the way its Battle Passes work, starting next December 1. Broadly speaking, the company has announced that the way to earn rewards in Fortnite Battle Royale will be greatly simplified, and the way to earn those rewards through the different experiences offered will also be unified. This means that the experience you earn will be used to unlock items in both Fortnite and LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival.

Here’s How Fortnite’s New Unified Battle Pass System Will Work

In a blog post on Fortnite’s official website, Epic Games has painstakingly detailed one of the big new features the game will have when its add-on experiences debut in December 2023. Broadly speaking, Epic wants to simplify how Battle Passes work for its various experiences (Fortnite, LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival) and make it easy for players to earn rewards across all of them for playing any of them.

While the Fortnite Battle Royale Battle Pass allows you to progress by earning XP and leveling up by redeeming earned Battle Stars for rewards, the idea is that any Fortnite experience that gives you XP will allow you to progress in the passes of all modes.

The first game mode to be affected by this implementation is Fortnite Festival, which will transition to this new progression system starting November 2 with the arrival of Season 6. This will mean the end of Festival Passes and LEGO Passes as we know them: instead of having a free reward track and a premium reward track, there will be a single reward track where both free and premium rewards will appear.

December 1, 2024, is the date that the transition will be complete for all game modes that use Additional Passes, which will be unified under this new system.

As you progress through the levels by earning XP, you will receive the appropriate rewards, but to get the premium rewards, you must purchase each pass individually. In this way, Epic Games encourages players to pay for this paid content by getting some free items, which is an effective monetization strategy.

This change is related to Epic Games’ desire to offer new experiences with each chapter of the game. Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 1 is expected to begin on December 1, 2024, so the change to this system would be part of the novelties of this phase of Fortnite.

How does this change affect players?

For players, this change to the progression system is positive because it will save time by allowing players to unlock rewards across all experiences without having to play through each one.

With the current system, for example, to progress in LEGO Fortnite’s rewards, only XP earned in LEGO Fortnite counts, but not in Fortnite or Rocket Racing. With the new system, it will be possible to progress in Battle Passes of any game experience, regardless of which one we play, effectively eliminating the “obligation” to play certain modes, something widely considered cumbersome or not very fun.

The simplification of Fortnite’s Battle Passes will also make it much easier to know what rewards we’re unlocking, and that we won’t have to switch so much between one mode or another to find a particular item, resulting in a more direct and less convoluted experience.