CARY, N.C. — On the heels of their poorly received update that made certain Fortnite skins age-restricted, Epic Games has announced a new way to make the game child-friendly. A new mode designed exclusively for kids called ‘KidZone’ featuring nothing except the item shop.
“We realize that our last update missed the mark,” explained Epic Vice President of Child Relations Chuck McDoogle. “We want kids to be safe but restricting skins was the wrong way to go about it. We had to do more to protect our young players.”
McDoogle says that he thought of his own children while coming up with ways to make the game a safer space for kids everywhere.
“My kids really inspired me to come up with a better solution to this. Between me being at the office all the time and my wife always being at her private pilates class, playing Fortnite is where most of their time goes. I had to make sure they wouldn’t be subjected to the horror of Spider-Man being gunned down.”
When designing KidZone, the team at Epic had tough choices to make when considering what they would leave in and what they would take out.
“Everyone knows kids love slaughtering their enemies but we had to figure out what they love as much or more and going through our data it hit us, spending their parent’s money. Kids maxing out parents’ credit cards on V-Bucks is one of the core pillars of the game.”
“It’s popular, it’s proven and it shields them from the more insidious aspects of the game,” McDoogle added. “Kids are not unlike cats or dogs, what really interests them the most is something shiny,”
Many older Fortnite players are excited about this mode as they feel it will also provide them with a better experience. One such player going by the Gamertag ‘slapnutz69’ explained,
“The kids having their own mode will be a really great way to curb harassment. With them in their own mode, they won’t be able to yell slurs at us older players.”
At press time Epic does not have an official release date for this mode but McDoogle confirms that it will definitely be after the holiday sale season.
