Fortnite says goodbye to exclusives: Battle Pass items may come to the store in the future

The recent controversy with Epic Games, which accidentally brought back a temporary 2019 exclusive outfit to the Fortnite store in mid-2024, has caused the company to rethink its strategy regarding these exclusives. The company has announced that from now on, all items from the game’s Battle Passes will likely appear in the daily store for a period of at least 18 months after the pass expires, which has sparked all kinds of different reactions from the community.

Epic Games is revolutionizing Fortnite: Battle Pass items will no longer be exclusive as of today

Through a statement on the game’s official website, Epic Games has announced its intention to end the temporary exclusivity of passes within Fortnite. The company has announced that items from future Fortnite Battle Passes will now be able to appear in the store after 18 months, once the pass in question has expired. The change is that previously, all items in a Battle Pass were exclusive to that Pass, and there was no other way to get them.

This is a move to “calm the waters” after the numerous criticisms the company received as a result of a mistake in its daily store on August 8: an outfit that was announced at the time as a temporary exclusivity for 2019 returned to the store, and this unintended return caused a serious rift in the community.

The main criticism Fortnite has received regarding this marketing strategy is that it encourages FOMO, which consists of getting players to buy digital items by creating artificial scarcity by making many of them available for a limited time only. While some are happy that all players now have access to certain once-exclusive items, it is the owners of these exclusive items who feel “betrayed” because they feel that these types of cosmetic items are now losing value and rarity.

Epic Games clarifies that it does not guarantee that all items from future Battle Passes will be available in the store, but rather that the measure itself means that they will no longer be exclusive to the store and will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. In this way, the rarest or most difficult items to obtain because they require time or the completion of certain quests may return in the future. Of course, this is a measure that will be implemented as of August 16, 2024, when Chapter 5 Season 4 of the game begins, and is not something that will be applied retroactively at this time.