Fortnite Creative Plagued by IP-Violating Maps That Harm Devs Playing by the Rules, Says Top Metaverse Studio Head

At right: Popular Fortnite Creative maps featuring Sponge Bob, Shrek, Minecraft without authorization

Mackenzie Jackson, who leads a top Fortnite Creative development studio that's created Fortnite deployments for Doritos and other top brands, recently posted this viral rant about how companies like hers are having to compete against Creative maps with rampant IP violations. Pleading directly to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney:

We deserve better that this. @TimSweeneyEpic I appreciate the world you have given us with Fortnite. I hold it so close to my heart, but I can’t keep silent on this stuff socially. Internal reporting isn’t working so I’m going public. You take to twitter to advocate for all the wrongdoings of Apple etc. I’m asking you to hear us out too.

Only about 5% of Creative maps include IP violations, MackJack estimates. The problem is that they're unfairly pulling players away from professional studios like hers, and there's no way for them to do anything about it:

"Apparently they will only be removed if the owner of the IP reports it with Epic. Epic wont take any action otherwise," as she puts it to in Discord. "Which just means for those creators following rules and not wanting to risk their reputation they will always be competing against the islands breaking the rules.

"To be candid about it, it has affected my companies finances to the point where it is worth my time to try to reach out to the IPs myself and try to get them to report with Epic. The IP [violating] games are essentially clickbait that is working--driving a high percentage of our player base to maps that are breaking TOS, we are all competing for shares of the engagement. Our maps dropped out of discovery due to it. Effectively killing our player base and our engagement revenue takes an astronomical hit."

Her tweet has been viewed over 100,000 times, pointing from her perspective to a groundswell of anger among Creative developers like her. 

"I can assure you that every dev team has complained at least once," she tells me, laughing without mirth. "Every creator I have talked to is reporting these islands. I just wanted Tim Sweeney to see the communities frustration around it. He tweets about Apple and all those injustices [with App Store fees/policies] and I need him to see his community and do better."

I've reached out to Epic about this and will post any reply I get here. My guess is Epic's hands are somewhat tied by lthe "safe harbor" provision of the US copyright law, but IANAL. I am surprised obvious potential IP violations aren't flagged before a map is published.

Anyway, read MackJack's original tweet below:

Let me start off by saying, I love Fortnite. I love my job. I love developing games inside UEFN and helping to grow this community and ecosystem.

However..

I am fed up with Epic not taking action against the parties breaking the VERY CLEAR Terms of Service.

We report these… pic.twitter.com/mHnxqpCDHZ

— MackJack | Mackenzie Jackson (@MackJackTwitch) July 22, 2023

MackJack's studio, by the way, is featured in a recent book.

Comments

[Martin K.]

> I am surprised obvious potential IP violations aren't flagged before a map is published.

Maps with obvious IP violations draw players to the platform, thus, Epic has a financial incentive not(!) to take action (as long as they aren't legally obliged to take action because of a notification by a copyright owner). The same issue plagues lots of metaverse platforms, including VRChat, Rec Room, etc.

> My guess is Epic's hands are somewhat tied by the "safe harbor" provision of the US copyright law, but IANAL.

AFAIK the DMCA's safe harbor provision allows(!) Epic to tolerate obvious copyright violations until the copyright owner notifies them. It doesn't prevent them from taking actions before that. (There are issues with a platform owner potentially violating creators' rights if the platform owner takes down potentially legitimate content because of potential copyright violations. However, platform owners can (and many do) just ask creators to provide documentation that they have the rights to use the IP that is in question. Not a perfect solution, but a first step.)

It might be worth mentioning that the DMCA's safe harbor provision only applies to copyright violations. It does not cover trademark violations.

Anyway, the issue won't go away until either the DMCA is changed or a platform becomes so big that copyright and trademark holders start to take action more frequently (e.g. YouTube, Steam, and more recently Roblox). Fortnite Creative, VRChat, Rec Room, etc. are just not big enough yet. And for these small platform, tolerating IP violations apparently is just too tempting an option.