Fortnite Combats Spam Maps In Discover!

It's Official - Epic Finally Combats Spam Maps In Discover!

For years, Creator’s have abused the discovery system by making spam and duplicate maps. Previously, the discovery system would reward these duplicate-style maps, as it meant creators had higher chances of being featured in the discover system.

This has lead to low-effort, low quality and impersonation maps, in a bid to fool players. Some creators even went as far as impersonating epic gamemodes, such as creative, hoping a player would get confused, and choose their map instead.

The New Rule

Finally, after years of feedback from the community, on Thursday March 5th, Epic announced a new rule for discover

1.9.1 - “No one likes spam. Do not publish multiple copies of the same island or metadata in an attempt to manipulate search ranking, engagement, or visibility from the same account, alternate accounts or teammate accounts.”

Epic said that enforcement of this rule would start on March 11th, and creators who violate the rule would be at risk of account suspension, monetisation black lists or map removals.

On Wednesday, March 11th, this rule finally came into effect.

With other 227,000 playable maps, and over 260,000 islands in the Fortnite ecosystem, this shows you how prominent this issue is. (Via FCHQ.IO)

Looking through discover today, it is already evident the effect these changes have had. There are much less spam maps being promoted, and visible on the homepage.

What Action Has been taken?

Fortnite, in a post on X stated that 5,497 islands have already been taken down within the first 24hrs of enforcement beginning.

This is great, and the changes are making the ecosystem look better.

BUT...

From my own research, creators are still publishing copy paste maps. For example, these maps were just published at the time of me writing this blog. Very similar thumbnails and very similar titles.

This may suggest in the future, additional enforcement may be needed, to prevent creators abusing the system.