New ‘Fortnite Imposters’ game mode raises copy-cat outcry

Epic Games have announced a new game mode for the ridiculously popular Fortnite called Fortnite Imposters. This new mode for 10 players will see 2 Imposters pitted against 8 Agents. The Agents will have assignments to complete through small minigames and will have to attempt to deduce who the Imposters may be before they’re all wiped out. Players can find frames of deceased Agents at which point everyone will be teleported to The Bridge where you can discuss and vote out a player. Sound familiar?

Fortnite Imposters, after being revealed, immediately got people talking and not always for the right reasons. The new game mode is being lambasted for copying the popular (but not Fortnite popular) Among Us. Admittedly the similarities are pretty damning, from the terminology ‘Imposters’ to the way the game is played, even the Fortnite Imposters map looks suspiciously similar to Among Us’ Skeld. But is copying always a bad thing, or could it be good for a new game to be entering into this niche?

Where Fortnite Imposters differentiates itself most from Among Us is with some additional mechanics the Imposters can utilise. Imposters can disable all tasks for a short period, they can relocate all players to help cover their tracks, and they can make all players look alike temporarily to help you hide in plain sight. Some admittedly interesting ideas to help change things up.

These differentiations don’t seem to be much consolation for the Among Us team who have taken to Twitter to showcase their disappointment. Victoria Tran, Community Director for Among Us, shared her thoughts (below), clearly frustrated and sad that they weren’t approached for collaboration and instead had their themes and terminology taken. Another Tweet by Tran went a bit deeper as she expressed a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness from having a big company take from her team’s ideas.

like game mechanics fine, those shouldn't be gatekept, but at the very least even different themes or terminology makes things more interesting? 😕

— Victoria Tran 🧋 (@TheVTran) August 17, 2021

Most of the agitated discourse over Fortnite Imposters right now seems to be coming from having a megacorporation like Epic take the idea from a humble indie studio and basically stamp out their competition through sheer size and power. It’s not a new tactic for Epic Games, with Fortnite originally being a clone of PUBG, a move that saw Epic sued for copyright infringement. But at what point does inspiration become copying? I guess that’s a question that isn’t too easy to answer. What do you think?

For anybody interested in Fortnite Imposters you can view the official announcement here.