Fortnite Creative’s new in-game purchases slammed for sketchy pricey bundles

Fortnite is earning its reputation as the most expensive free game around. After announcing in September 2025 that it would be introducing in-game purchases to Creative islands, developer Epic Games rolled that feature out to users on Friday, Jan. 9, and it did not go well.

It took almost no time at all for the developers of Steal the Brainrot, a game very similar to Roblox‘s user-created game Steal a Brainrot, to add a randomized item bundle you can pay actual V-bucks for — and gamble on.

Once Epic opened the third-party in-game purchases floodgate, the developers of Steal the Brainrot added a 4,900 V-buck loot box that adds two randomized items to your inventory, as noted by IGN. For context, a 5,000 V-buck pack costs $36.99. There’s also a single-item box for 2,700 V-bucks (roughly $22.99).

While those are, at the very least, questionable purchases to add to a Fortnite Creative island targeted directly at younger audiences, it’s not the most egregious addition. Developers of Steal the Brainrot also added an option to spend V-bucks to spin a prize wheel that could give players a variety of different levels of loot within the game. The first spin is free, but then you can pay 100 V-bucks for a spin that, according to its description, offers twice the chance of landing on a lucky space.

Yes, that’s gambling.

Gambling on loot boxes isn’t new to Fortnite. In 2022, Epic Games announced it had reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, in which it was fined $245 million after the FTC claimed it “used dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases and let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement.”

Image: Epic Games/Polygon

On the list of changes Epic Games announced after the settlement was that loot boxes were staying gone (after being removed in 2019) and a promise of “no gambling ever.” Other changes included an improved refund policy, more parental controls, and a daily spending limit for kids under 13. It’s unclear how microtransactions in Creative islands impact those changes, though Polygon has reached out to Epic Games for comment on the situation.

Epic Games is giving creators huge incentives to add transactions to their islands. Currently, the company is allowing all creators who use in-game purchases to keep 100% of the income earned from their island. Beginning on Feb. 1, 2027, both Fortnite and the creator will take an even split of what’s earned. That gives Epic a year to let Fortnite Creative users bolster their islands with in-game purchases before it starts directly profiting from them.

While most of the thousands of Fortnite Creative islands might not have an audience big enough to make in-game purchases worthwhile, it’s clear that some of them do. A year from now, when Epic Games starts getting its cut of those sales, it’s going to be a financial boon for the company.

One of the criticisms of Roblox, which Fortnite’s Creative islands mode is modeled after, is the abundance of in-game purchases across its user-generated games. In 2025, a ripoff of Peak was added to Roblox, which sold upgrades to players for in-game currency purchased using actual money. Even developer AggroCrab spoke out against it, writing, “tbh would rather you pirate our game than play this microtransaction-riddled Roblox slop ripoff.”

I hope this isn’t the future Fortnite is facing, simply becoming a hub of badly made game ripoffs that want to charge you for questionable content. Given that Steal the Brainrot originated on Roblox before becoming a Fortnite Creative island, though, my hopes are dwindling.