It only took about nine years, but Fortnite Save the World is finally going free-to-play. Epic Games announced that the original PvE mode, which predates Battle Royale, will be free for everyone starting April 16. For those who don’t remember, Save the World was actually the original Fortnite, a co-op action-building game where players team up to build forts, craft weapons, and fight off hordes of monsters. Battle Royale came later and, well, we all know how that turned out. Save the World was actually the Fortnite we spent the most hours with, and were actually disappointed when support shifted to Battle Royale. We obviously know why it did, considering Save the World didn’t have much of a player base compared to Battle Royale, but we were disappointed nonetheless.
Save the World will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Switch 2, PC, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, and Amazon Luna. It will not be available on smartphones, tablets, or the original Nintendo Switch. New purchases of Save the World are being paused starting tonight, March 11, at 5:00 PM Pacific (8:00 PM Eastern) to prepare for the transition.
Ahead of the free-to-play launch, Epic is running a community goal where players can register with their Epic account at save-the-world.fortnite.com to earn in-game rewards. There are three milestones to hit: 300,000 registrations unlocks the Save the World Jess Banner, 700,000 unlocks Kyle’s Construction Spray, and 1,000,000 unlocks the Snowstrike Hero. As of now, the community is at 12 percent of the first milestone. Anyone who registers before April 16 is eligible for all rewards, even if the milestones have already been hit by the time they sign up. The Snowstrike Hero is a Save the World-specific reward that will be granted when the mode goes free-to-play, with first-time players receiving it after completing the in-game tutorial.
This is a pretty interesting move from Epic, especially coming alongside the V-Bucks price increases we just covered. Opening Save the World to everyone for free could bring in new players who have only ever known Fortnite as a Battle Royale game. Whether those players stick around for a mode that’s nearly a decade old remains to be seen, but at the very least, it’s a good way to introduce a whole new audience to where Fortnite started.
