Fortnite fans who dabble in crypto had a great end to the holiday period, as it turned out that the Fortnite Merch Store was accepting Monero as a method of payment for items. However, Tim Sweeney – Epic Games CEO – burst the crypto adoption bubble by announcing that it was an accident. The ability to pay with Monero has since been removed from the Fortnite merch store, leaving crypto fans feeling a little dejected.
Actually, Fortnite’s brief foray into crypto was accidental. We worked with a partner to open a merchandise store, and somewhere along the way Monero payment was enabled.https://t.co/vzmSCMey3T
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) January 6, 2019
Another “Accident” From Epic Games?
Back in September 2017, die-hard fans of Fortnite noticed that gameplay wasn’t all as it appeared to be. They were in fact playing against gamers using different consoles via Epic Games’ cross-play service. At the time Epic Games said it happened due to a bug, but it very much looks as if it was testing the waters to see how gamers would react.
There is a good chance that this could be a similar situation and Epic Games was simply testing the waters to see how crypto payments would go down in their merch store. It’s safe to say that the crypto world loved it, and if Epic Games enables Monero payments for good we could see a lot of new gamers installing Fortnite.
Fortnite Gamers Targeted by Crypto Scammers
Now more than ever, gamers on Fortnite need to be incredibly careful. A group of scammers are targeting players in-game and offering hacks for free to help weaker players get better. When the players install the so-called hacks, a trojan virus is also installed that looks around the player’s computer looking for anything related to crypto. Any identified wallets, seed phrases, or keys are quickly cloned and sent back to the scammers. With this new wave of crypto interest, scams like this could quickly become more commonplace in the game.
Not Ruling Out Decentralization and Crypto
As a well-known decentralized fan, Sweeny followed up his announcement stating that while Epic Games isn’t accepting crypto right now, it is looking into decentralization with cryptos for the future. While this isn’t a solid roadmap for the launch of a Fortnite cryptocurrency, we can rest assured knowing that somewhere down the line Epic Games will introduce some form of blockchain technology.
Many of us at Epic are big fans of the decentralized computing tech underlying cryptocurrency, however a lot more work is needed on volatility and fraud-proofing before bringing it to such a broad audience that includes younger gamers.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) January 6, 2019
For the time being, we will have to stick to using V-Bucks – the Fortnite in-game currency – or US Dollars on the merch store. Many crypto fans will be a little disappointed by the decision to remove Monero from the merch store, but here’s to hoping that it will make a massive comeback very soon.
