The team behind the popular game Among Us is not very pleased with Fortnite Impostors. This is a new limited-time mode that Epic Games has added to Fortnite. The name and features of this mode are very reminiscent of Among Us.
Community manager Victoria Tran of Among Us developer Innersloth says on Twitter to have no objections that specific game mechanics are carried over, but that different themes and terminology would have made the new mode more interesting. She indicates that it would have been great to have Innersloth as an indie developer could have partnered with Epic Games. A Unity programmer and colleague of hers can’t hide her disappointment either and that applies also for fellow programmer Gary Porter.
Innersloth co-founder Marcus Bromander says on Twitter that the company has not patented any mechanisms from Among Us, saying that “does not lead to a healthy gaming industry.” “Is it really that hard to put in 10 percent more effort to put your own spin on it?” he writes in an accusatory tone. According to him Innersloth actually tried to partner with Epic Games. Tran told PC Gamer that Innersloth, like everyone else, only now learned about the arrival of the new Fortnite mode.
Fortnite Impostors revolves around ten players, eight of whom are agents and two impostors or impostors. The game takes place in a submarine where just like in Among Us the agents have to perform tasks while the impostors have to sabotage it and take out the agents. In Fortnite mode, the agents can call a meeting to exchange information to be able to remove any suspicious players via a vote. There are differences at the level of detail, such as that there are no corpses in Fortnite Impostors, emotes are usable, it takes place in a secret base instead of a spaceship and that a large part of the tasks also have to do with Fortnite.
It is not the first time that some degree of criticism has been leveled at how Epic Games incorporates certain ideas, genres, mechanics or concepts from other games into Fortnite. Fortnite was originally not a battle royale game. That wasn’t built in until later, something PUBG Corporation couldn’t appreciate. Her then existing game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was built on the basis of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, where Epic engineers had also helped develop PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
This point of copying another game has also been put to Innersloth on Twitter. The reproach is that Among Us has in a sense taken over the concept of the live party game Mafia, also known as Werewolf, and has slightly modified it. Over there Bromander responded with the comment that if Warner Bros. for example, the Nemesis System from Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor could patent and Square Enix could patent Final Fantasy’s Active Time Battle system, which Innersloth could also patent the task systems from Among Us. The indie studio probably does not intend to do that given its earlier position, but Bromander indicates that in theory it should be possible.