Epic Games is increasing the price of V-Bucks in Fortnite, claiming it needs help to “pay the bills”.
In a new blog post on the official Fortnite site, the studio announced: “The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we’re raising prices to help pay the bills.”
Starting on March 19, the company will be offering fewer V-Bucks in each paid pack, and will also be adjusting the prices of its in-game Passes and Fortnite Crew rewards accordingly.
The new values for each pack will be as follows:
$8.99 pack – 800 V-Bucks (was 1,000)$22.99 pack – 2,400 V-Bucks (was 2,800)$36.99 pack – 4,500 V-Bucks (was 5,000)$89.99 Pack – 12,500 V-Bucks (was 13,500)Exact amount pack – $0.99 for 50 V-Bucks (was $0.49 for 50)
The Battle Pass, which previously cost 1,000 V-Bucks, will now only cost 800 V-Bucks. However, completing it will also only earn the player 800 V-Bucks instead of 1,000 – this does at least still mean players can unlock the next Battle Pass with the rewards from the previous one. The 500 V-Bucks earned in Bonus Rewards are being dropped.
As for the other Battle Passes, Epic has announced the following changes:
OG Pass – 800 V-Bucks (was 1,000)Music Pass – 1,200 V-Bucks (was 1,400)Lego Pass – 1,200 V-Bucks (was 1,400)
Fortnite Crew members will now only receive 800 V-Bucks as part of their monthly rewards, instead of 1,000.
Despite the changes, Epic says players who currently have existing V-Bucks gift cards will still get the values printed on them when they’re redeemed.
Last month Epic Games announced that PC players spent $1.16 billion on the Epic Games Store last year, while Statista estimates that Epic Games generated $6.21 billion in gross revenue last year overall.
However, general manager Steve Allison recently told Polygon that the Epic Games Store was only “marginally profitable”, due to a low profit margin on third-party games and the fees paid to developers and publishers for its weekly free game deal.