Jack of All Controllers

During a meeting in parliament, Epic Games’ marketing boss Matthew Weissinger and chief counsel Canon Pence denied claims that their game Fortnite is addictive, and that they are making money off of the game. The meeting is part of an “Immersive and addictive technologies inquiry” currently being conducted by the British Parliament.

During the inquiry, the two staff members were asked various questions regarding their game. One such question they were challenged with was the amount of money the company was making from the game, in which Canon Pence responded with “I don’t think it’s accurate to define Epic as making money from people playing the game.” (at 14:50:07 in the video) which was quite bizzare to hear. With all of the microtransactions from the cosmetics along with the battle pass, you’d expect that it would’ve made them more than enough money, with the company earning roughly three billion in 2018 largely thanks to the game’s growing popularity.

Along with this, the duo responded to the claims made by Prince Harry saying Fortnite is “created to addict, an addiction to keep you in front of a computer for as long as possible. It’s so irresponsible. “, saying that his claims were extremely far from the truth and that they were determined to keep a long standing relationship with their community.

All things considered, the claims are quite bizzare for them to make as the game has no doubt drawn in a massive profit for the company that can’t simply be denied.

This isn’t the first hearing in parliment we’ve seen, as earlier today parliment spoke with EA regarding loot boxes. This likely won’t be the last either as the inquiry is going to take several months. As for what will come out of this inquiry is currently unknown.

Fortnite is available on PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android.