Fortnite Creative Island Mode, Rules and Guidelines Updated

Fortnite Creative is a fun mode where Fornite players can claim their own island and make their own custom content. You can have your favorite things around the island, customize them, and invite your friends to play there with you. Today we will be going over the guidelines and rules that Epic Games has for their Creative Fortnite mode so you can stay safe while gaming on their platform and not go against their rules. The rules and guidelines were recently updated on November 1, 2022, and below is the list from the official Epic Games site.

FORTNITE CREATIVE RULES

Update 11/01/22:

• Commercial content policies have been added (4.2)
• Numerous policy clarifications

Fortnite Creative allows you to create and publish experiences within Fortnite.

Fortnite aims to be a safe and fun place for people to play games or hang with their friends, exactly as we say in our Community Rules. 

As you create new experiences, maps, and experiences within Fortnite, we need your help to keep Fortnite safe, fun, and welcoming to everyone. We also want to make it easy for you to create and be successful with your Fortnite Creative experience. 

These Fortnite Creative Rules outline the appropriate ways to create, promote and monetize your Fortnite Creative experiences, including some important dos and don’ts. Please take the time to read them carefully before you publish your first Fortnite Creative experience and best of luck with your experience!

TL;DR:

Your experience is your responsibility, and you must comply with all relevant rules:

1. Your experience must comply with both the rules below and the Epic Games Content Guidelines.
2. Your behavior must comply with both the rules below and the Epic Games Community Rules.
3. Any promotion of your experience, both within and outside of Fortnite, must comply with both the rules below and the Fortnite Creative Branding Guidelines. 

THE RULES

1 CONTENT RULES & GUIDELINES

As we work together to ensure Fortnite stays a safe and welcoming environment for everyone, your content must follow these rules:

1.1 A Safe Environment – Don’t contribute to content involving or promoting illegal activities, including harassment, bullying, assault, doxing, swatting, gambling, illegal drugs, animal cruelty, fraud, hacking, and piracy. Content that condones or incites violence against others has no place here.

1.2 Keep Personal Info Private – To help avoid deceptive practices (phishing, buying/selling account information), do not disclose or request personal information through Island messaging. To preserve other’s privacy, do not gather, share, exploit the personal information of individuals or organizations through the use of your experience, or attempt to. Do not provide methods within your experience for players to communicate using free-text outside of the Epic-provided social features.

1.3 Intolerance and Discrimination – Fortnite welcomes diversity in race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, national origin, and other groups. Content should not demean, marginalize, use hateful language against, or belittle other users or groups. 

1.4 Love… Don’t Hate – Don’t create content that includes hateful symbols or depictions or content that glorifies or incites violence.

1.5 Bullying and Harassment – Respect others that participate in your creation. Interacting with others in a way that is predatory, threatening, intimidating, lewd, demeaning, derogatory, invasive of privacy, or abusive is against the rules.

1.6 Give Credit Where It’s Due – Don’t impersonate other users, streamers, celebrities, government officials, Epic employees, or anyone else. And don’t take credit for another user’s creation. Pretending to be someone else in order to deceive or defraud others is not okay.

1.7 Play By The Rules – Do not create Islands that promote the use of known cheats, exploits, glitched items, server crashes, and bugs. Do not use your island as a way to scam other players, including dishonest practices, such as exploiting the Support-A-Creator program or featuring clickbait advertisements.

1.8 Appropriate Language Only – Don’t name your island or include on your island obscene text or symbols, nor spelling variations, or visual depictions of text aimed at evading these rules.

1.9 All Bets Are Off – Don’t implement gambling, raffles, or casino-style games that involve real money or V-Bucks.

1.10 Keep It On The Island – Do not include offsite web links anywhere on your Island. Note: Promotion of social media handles/channels is fine provided they don’t include a URL.

1.11 Keep It Authentic: When promoting your experience inside Fortnite, the assets (such as thumbnail images or videos) you use to represent your Fortnite experience must accurately represent what players will experience in your island: you must not mislead players as to the sort of experience they will have. You may not incorporate photographs.  You must not incorporate elements that mislead players with regards to XP gains, in game items, and quests. Where Fortnite already provides a visual element to indicate a feature to the players (e.g. the ability to earn XP in your experience) you must not supplement it.

1.12 Stay Within Spec Guidelines – Make sure the Islands you’re creating do not cause server issues — intentionally or not. Framerates should stay above 30 FPS. Use your best judgment!

1.13 Align with the Game Rating – Fortnite is a teen-rated title (ESRB Teen 13+, PEGI 12+). Do not create content that isn’t appropriate for a teen audience. For example, content “made for kids” or “adult content” (no nursery rhymes, no pole dancing). No gore.

2 WORKING WITH OTHERS

2.1 If you engage another Builder to help you build your experience or, similarly, if you agree to help another Builder create their experience, it is an agreement between you and that person. Epic Games is in no way a party to your agreement and is not responsible for it in any way.

2.2 If you are interested in utilizing custom video or image content in your experience and want to learn how to do that, please contact us using this form to find out how to get early access to that functionality.

3 PROMOTING YOUR EXPERIENCE

We want to make it easy for you to promote your Fortnite experience to help it be successful. Promotion of your experience, whether within or outside of Fortnite, must follow these rules:

3.1 USE OF EPIC GAMES AND FORTNITE IP

3.1.1 When promoting your experience, your experience must not be represented as developed in partnership with Epic Games or suggest that it is in any way an official Epic Games Fortnite experience, existing or past.

3.1.2. When promoting your experience, you may use the “Created in Fortnite” logo as long as it follows our Fortnite Creative Branding Guidelines.  

3.1.3. You must not use the Fortnite or Epic Games logos anywhere in your experience or in the promotional materials for your experience. 

3.1.4. When promoting your experience, the assets you use to represent your experience must look and feel like your experience, and follow our Fortnite Creative Branding Guidelines: they must not mislead players as to the sort of experience they will have. You may not incorporate photographs or other similar real-world imagery.

3.1.5. You must prominently include the following legal line on all promotional material: This is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by Epic Games, Inc.  

3.1.6. When creating promotional materials for your experience, you must only show outfits or items that are owned by Epic Games (or that you have express permission or rights to use). For example, don’t use Marvel or DC outfits.

3.2 MARKETING ACTIVITIES

3.2.1. All marketing content you use to promote your experience, regardless of channel or format, must comply with these rules. Epic reserves the right to prohibit any given marketing activity that it feels violates these rules. 

3.2.2. You must not run advertisements on television or digital ad networks to promote your experience, without express and prior consent from Epic Games. Please contact us using this form.   

3.2.3. You may promote your experience digitally via advertisements and assets on your own websites, social channels or platforms, as well as with text-based search ads, such as Google Search.

3.2.4. If you engage and pay influencers to promote your experience, you must follow all applicable laws such as the FTC Endorsement Guidelines, so that your influencer’s connection to your experience is clearly and conspicuously disclosed.

3.2.5. You must not create and distribute physical promotional items of any kind to promote your experience, for example, clothing, stickers, flyers, mugs, etc., without express and prior consent from Epic Games.

3.2.6. When promoting your experience via search advertisements, you must not purchase advertisements against keywords or search terms that are Epic Games trademarks, such as “Fortnite” or “Epic Games”.

3.2.7. Fortnite is an ESRB Teen and PEGI 12 rated game. All advertising, promotion, or communication-related to your experience must be age-appropriate and follow ESRB Teen and PEGI ratings systems.  You must not target under-13s with advertising, promotion, or communication of any kind for your experience.

3.3 EVENT MARKETING

3.3.1. You may promote your experience through physical and online events, as long as your event, competition or tournament complies with all the Fortnite Event License Terms and the Fortnite Third Party Event Brand Guidelines.

3.4 CONTESTS AND SWEEPSTAKES

3.4.1. Promotions of your experience offering prizes are not allowed.

3.4.2. “Giveaways” and “raffles” to promote your experience are not allowed.

3.5 ENGAGING WITH PRESS

3.5.1. Press release materials you create to promote your experience must not state or suggest in any way that your experience is an official Epic Games experience, or that you are in a partnership with Epic Games.

3.5.2. All press release materials you create to promote your experience should include the following: “This is an independently created Fortnite Creative experience and is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by Epic Games, Inc.”

3.5.3. If you have any questions about promoting your experience with the press or would like your press materials reviewed to ensure they comply with our policies, please reach out to Epic Games at [email protected].

3.5.4. Please reference the below example language when describing Fortnite Creative in your press materials:

3.5.4.1. “Fortnite is developed by Epic Games, and offers a wide range of tools to empower anyone to design games and experiences.”

3.5.4.2. “In Fortnite, anyone can build their own online experience for free and share it with Fortnite’s audience around the world.”

4 MONETIZING YOUR EXPERIENCE

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to monetize your Fortnite experience while maintaining transparency for players. These rules outline what you can and cannot do to monetize your Fortnite experience:

4.1 SUPPORT-A-CREATOR

4.1.1. You may monetize your experience via the Support-A-Creator program. To participate in the program, please apply here.

4.1.2. You must use the Support Device to request support from players in your experience. You may not use any other methods for requesting for support from players (via Support-A-Creator or other platforms) in your experiences, except where those methods are provided explicitly by Epic Games.

4.1.3. When using the Support Device, you must not force usage of the Support Device for players to proceed in your experience. 

4.1.4. Islands that use the “Battle Royale Island” starter island are currently ineligible for monetization, and Support-A-Creator features will be automatically disabled. You may not advertise your creator code in such islands.

4.2 COMMERCIAL CONTENT AND SPONSORSHIPS

Brands and Creators are welcome to collaborate in Fortnite, as long as they follow these rules and any applicable laws. You cannot pay Epic Games to promote your content within Fortnite. 

4.2.1. Commercial Content is permitted in Fortnite Creative. Commercial content is defined as any island that contains content which promotes or endorses a brand, product, service or organization. 

4.2.2. Commercial content is either “Paid”, which needs to be disclosed by the Creator, or “Owned”, which does not.

a. Paid Commercial Content is an island that contains, either in the island itself or its metadata, content for which you have been compensated (e.g. received anything of value, including money, goods, and/or services) by others. This content may be in the form of sponsorship, endorsement, takeover, placement or other.

b. Owned Commercial Content is an island that is built or controlled by a brand or other commercial entity.

4.2.3. If you create Paid content, you are responsible for complying with any applicable laws around disclosing your relationship with the sponsor/brand.

4.2.4.  Individual creators must be at least 18 to create or publish Paid commercial content. 

4.2.5. Whether commercial content or not, your island’s metadata (name, description, thumbnail, loading screen text, or Discover video) must not include calls to action, product claims, dates or pricing. These things are okay inside your experience. Examples of things that aren’t allowed in your island’s metadata: 

1. “Go to onlinestore.com to learn more!”
2. “Available now for only $19.99!”
3. “This product works better than ever!”
4. “See event at 9pm on TV channel, on this day!”

4.2.6. Commercial content and sponsors must follow all the content rules above, and the Epic Content Guidelines, and must not: 

1. promote the purchase, sale or trade of any medical, pharmaceutical or supplemental products or services;
2. promote membership to, or solicit donations to political organizations; 
3. promote enrollment in the military;
4. promote real-money gambling; 
5. promote the purchase, sale or trade of real-world explosives, firearms, or ammunition;
6. promote the purchase, sale or trade of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana (regardless of legality), illegal drugs and other illegal, contraband, or regulated goods;
7. promote deceptive or harmful financial products and services; 
8. promote real-world dating, romantic introductions or hook-ups.

4.2.7.  You may sell sponsorships for “in person” events, tournaments and competitions related to your experience, provided your event complies with all the Fortnite Event License Terms and the Fortnite Third Party Event Brand Guidelines.

4.3 THINGS TO AVOID

4.3.1. You must not restrict access to specific content or items within an experience via external sites; all content should be accessible in-game.  

4.3.2. You must not charge for access to your experience; it must be freely accessible to all Fortnite players.

4.3.3. You must not create, distribute or sell physical merchandise that features any Epic Games or Fortnite assets or logos, such as clothing, hats, or mugs.

OTHER TERMS & CONDITIONS

As a reminder, as a player of Fortnite, you are bound by the Fortnite EULA, and as a Fortnite Creator who has been given the ability to publish content to Fortnite, you are bound by the Support-A-Creator Terms & Conditions.

CONSEQUENCES

If Epic is made aware that Creator Rules are being violated, Epic will take action on a case-by-case basis. We’ll look at a variety of factors, including the severity of the issue, whether you’re a repeat offender, and other factors. Action taken can be anything from a warning, or ineligibility for appearing in Discovery or to be featured, all the way up to a permanent account ban for more severe offenses.

If your Epic account is permanently banned, you may lose all rights to Epic games, virtual items, account balances, or other items that you may have earned or purchased. 

PLAYER REPORTING

We are all a part of this community, and it is up to us to keep it friendly, fun, and free of negativity. If you encounter a player or creator that is not respecting the rules above, you can report them or report their island.

If you meet someone you don’t like but who isn’t violating the Community Rules, you can block the person.

These rules were last updated on 11/01/22

If you would like to read further, you can link this source for this information from the official Fortnite Creative twitter. You can get Fortnite for free on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.