Summary
Epic Gamesand Harmonix have announced that they’re changing howFortniteFestival’s song rotation works for a more “curated” approach, and fans really aren’t happy about it.
Ever since 2017, Fortnite has been one of the biggest games of all time, but itgot even bigger towards the end of 2023 with the game’s biggest update to this day. Chapter 5, Season 1 saw the introduction of three massive game modes - Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and,most excitingly of all, Fortnite Festival.
While Rocket Racing has basically already diedand Lego Fortnite has slowed down a bit, Fortnite Festival has been abig hit thanks to how it brings Harmonix’s Rock Band experience to a live-service space. It’s been a while since Fortnite Festival has had a big update or change beyond adding new songs and headliners, but it seems that’s sadly about to change.
Fortnite Festival Is Limiting Its Song Library And Fans Hate It
Over on Twitter,the official Fortnite Festival account shared an update on the mode’s Jam Track rotation, which will be going for a more “curated” approach. The update will essentially reduce the number of available tracks up for purchase at a time and will now have a “hand-picked” list of tracks, similar to what Fortnite does with its normal Item Shop.
Epic and Harmonix also announced that Jam Tracks will now be released with a “more flexible release schedule"instead of every Thursday, which seems to suggest they’ll be taking a bit longer and not be as consistent. While the messaging doesn’t sound too bad, fans quickly dug through the statement and pointed out how much “FOMO” the change is going to introduce.
As pointed out by a community note, the changes will mean that over 200 Jam Tracks will be unavailable to purchase at a time unless they’re in the shop’s rotation, basically adding a need to buy them before they’re rotated out. As you can imagine, the response from players hasn’t been very positive so far.
The backlash is very reminiscent of all the complaints that still get made aboutolder battle pass skins not returning for purchase.
Beyond worries about the game mode’s life expectancy with the release schedule changing, fans have called themove “anti-consumer” and claimed it’s just being added to introduce FOMO and boost sales. While the Jam Tracks shop has admittedly been a little too packed for a while, it doesn’t seem like players are going to take the change well.
