• by Colin Kirkland , March 20, 2024

Per Epic Games’ recent partnership with Lego, Fortnite users will now be able to design and create their own Lego templates and Lego-branded elements to build their own games inside the popular metaverse gaming platform.

Epic announced the news at the 2024 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco -- unveiling new Lego elements, styles and brand assets that are now available in Epic's Unreal Editor for Fortnite and Fortnite Creative.

The company says that creators will be able to publish their own Lego games for players of all ages.

However, to be eligible for payouts through Fortnite's creative economy, creators'Lego games must retain “an ESRB rating of E10+ to be accessible to players in the United States, and a PEGI rating of 7 to be accessible to players in most of Europe.”

The first Fortnite Lego game marked a notable shift for both companies.

Fortnite, a battle royale gaming platform popular among younger males, and Lego, a physical toy brand, want to appeal to a wider swath of consumers by providing new experiences and loyalty options tied to their brands.

As of December 2023, Lego reported seeing a 10% growth in brand value year-over-year and currently ranks 59th on a list of top 100 global brands devised by Interbrand's Best Global Brands research for 2024.

By premiering on Fortnite, Lego is betting that users have moved past last year's FTC fine of $520 million against Epic Games for using “dark patterns” to trick younger users into making in-game purchases, and for violating the federal children’s privacy law.

Since Lego invested $1 billion for its Epic metaverse deal, the Danish company has built and published several family-friendly Lego Islands, or games, in Fortnite and announced three more Islands at the Game Developers Conference on Wednesday.