Beating PUBG to market on console, Epic’s free-to-play shooter Fortnite: Battle Royale has been a massive success. Just recently, the studio announced that Fortnite had passed 40 million downloads as of January, spread across the base game and Battle Royale.
The game’s popularity is impacting Epic’s other free-to-play game, Paragon, which is now seeing only a “small number” of players who stick with the game in the long term, the studio said in a Reddit post. As such, Epic is unsure about the game’s future.
“The core challenge is that, of new players who try Paragon, only a small number continue to play regularly after a month,” Epic said. “Though Paragon has evolved, no iteration has yet achieved that magical combination of ingredients that make for a sustainable game.”
Epic added that it does not believe the issue is related to marketing or monetization, noting that it has “good ideas” about how to fix those problems if more players came onboard. Over the course of the coming weeks, Epic said it plans to evaluate if it is possible to come up with a plan to get Paragon to a place where it can see measurable “growth and success.”
For now, Paragon players should expect the frequency of updates to slow down. This is due in part to a number of Paragon developers moving to the Fortnite team and the issues mentioned above. It is understandable that Epic would want to keep the updates and support going for Fortnite, as that kind of commitment has been a major part of the game’s appeal. Epic also noted that Fortnite is now “far larger than anything in Epic’s past.”
“We welcome your thoughts on what we should do [with Paragon],” Epic said. “Like you, the team is deeply passionate about Paragon. Like you, we would love to find a path that works. And like the community at large, we are not all in agreement on what could place Paragon on a fundamentally better path for all.”
Paragon, a MOBA, initially launched in 2016 as a paid early access game on PS4 and PC, with an open beta and a free-to-play version going live in February last year. As for Fortnite, a huge new update for the game landed this week, making significant changes to the map and more.
In addition to Paragon and Fornite, Epic is working on a free-to-play Unreal Tournament game. The company also operates and licenses the Unreal Engine, which is very popular.