Epic Games has made a somewhat stunning announcement for Fortnite.
They revealed that they are increasing the real money prices for V-Bucks. Rather than increasing the amount of dollars charged, you now get less V-Bucks for every dollar spent.
At the low end, the $ 8.99 pack goes from 1,000 to 800 V-Bucks. At the very top, $ 89.99 drops from 13,500 to 12,500 V-Bucks.
To compensate, Epic Games has increased compensation in the Epic Rewards program. If you buy V-Bucks on the Epic Games Store or using their payment systems (unavailable in consoles), you get 20 % back you can redeem back in Fortnite, as well as games in Epic Games Store or published by Epic.
Epic is also compensating by lowering the costs of Battle Passes, OG Passes, etc.
At the end of the day, Epic themselves say the cost of running Fortnite has gone up. Whatever they gained from settling with Google may not have been enough everything else making it harder to make games.
That could include the generative AI supply crisis, and more recent events surrounding the Iran war. Because of that, V-Bucks will now be more expensive than when Fortnite first launched.