Epic Games is hiring for the Fortnite Community Team: Good news for competitive?

The new role will hopefully allow Epic to create an open dialogue with the competitive Fortnite community.

When Fortnite Battle Royale first released back in 2017, a huge part of its initial success was the communication between the developers and their community. We had regular patch notes, YouTube breakdowns and Reddit threads, not just listing changes but also explaining the reasoning behind them.

This transparency and responsiveness to feedback made fans feel like they were part of the game they loved. Things moved fast, updates kept rolling, and players improved at a tremendous speed.

Unfortunately, as the playerbase grew, skill disparity increased and the divide between casual and competitive became more defined. Pleasing everyone became an impossible task. Eventually, whatever they did, Epic would receive a torrent of abuse from one camp or the other.

I'm not asking people to stop complaining, I'm telling you guys spamming RIP Fortnite everywhere is stupid and I won't be joining something that directly hurts my livelihood.

Spam #NerfAimAssist all you want. #RemoveTheMech...

— Ballatw (@Ballatw) April 12, 2020

Surely at least partly due to this rise in toxicity within the community, by the beginning of Fortnite Chapter 2, communication was at an all time low. It almost felt like after the infamous Black Hole event we stayed in darkness for another year.

With all that said however, 2021 has been a different story. Detailed competitive blog posts and patch notes have returned, at least to some extent, and it seems as though we are finally heading back in the right direction.

A recent tweet from Epic Games’ Community Manager Stephen Thompson revealed that they are “currently looking for someone to join the Fortnite Community team”, adding that the role will be “focused primarily on Fortnite competitive”.

While there isn’t much information on what this position will entail, it’s certainly interesting news. The competitive community has always yearned to have a liaison at Epic who can provide a bit more insight on the decision-making process and act as a direct point of contact for key feedback.

In many cases people just want to know why an idea hasn’t been tested or a certain issue is going unchanged. Having a dedicated competitive community manager could make a real difference here and drastically help to improve the relationship between Epic Games and its players.

The Twitter post has attracted a lot of attention and it appears that plenty of awesome candidates have already shown interest. Touch wood we’ll start to see the impact of this new hire before too long.

In the meantime, the Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 8 Competitive Update revealed that Epic will soon be sending out a competitive focused survey to supporters. Ensure that you’ve opted-in to receive emails via the Epic Games website if you want the opportunity to share your thoughts.