Among Us devs speak out about Fortnite's controversial Impostors mode
"Worst part is we've been actively trying to collab with them."
News by Wesley Yin-Poole, Editor
Updated on 18 August 2021
Some of the people behind indie hit Among Us have spoken out about Fortnite's new Impostors mode.
Yesterday, Fortnite developer Epic announced a new game mode for its all-encompassing battle royale that has an uncanny resemblance to 2018 online multiplayer social deduction game Among Us.
Fortnite Impostors sees 10 players, eight agents and two impostors play out their roles on a submarine. Like in Among Us, the agents carry out routine assignments, while the impostors sabotage the facility and eliminate players. Impostors can also teleport players to cover their tracks and disable assignments.
In 2018, the makers of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds sued Epic Games over Fortnite Battle Royale, the mode that Epic launched in September 2017. Fortnite Battle Royale turned what had been a PvE base-building game into a worldwide esports phenomenon, and an extremely lucrative one at that. PUBG had launched in early access the preceding spring, and many of its battle royale rules and features are replicated in Fortnite. But a month after bringing the lawsuit in Korea, PUBG Corp. dropped the claim, after reaching a confidential settlement with Epic.
Polygon reached out on Wednesday morning to an Epic Games representative for the company’s reaction to Innersloth’s remarks, and the public perception that Fortnite has again copied one of the most popular gaming formats of the moment. We haven’t heard back as of publication time.
And just like Among Us, agents can call for a discussion at any time by finding and reporting an eliminated agent or interacting with the discussion panel. During discussions, Agents and impostors can share information with each other via emotes and a brand-new quick chat menu, asking contextual questions about who was doing what and accusing suspicious candidates for ejection.
At the end of each discussion, agents and impostors vote to either eject someone or skip their vote.
As news of the new mode spread online, some of the people behind Among Us expressed their disappointment on social media.
"It would've been really, really cool to collab haha," tweeted Among Us community director Victoria Tran. "Just sad indie hours rn."
Then: "Like game mechanics fine, those shouldn't be gatekept, but at the very least even different themes or terminology makes things more interesting?"
Innersloth's lead Unity programmer, Adriel Wallick, expressed her disappointment via a webcomic:
"Anyway - just feeling pretty bummed today," she added.
InnerSloth co-founder Marcus Bromander took to Twitter to point out the company did not patent Among Us' mechanics because "I don't think that leads to a healthy game industry".
"Is it really that hard to put 10 percent more effort into putting your own spin on it though?"
Responding to a Twitter user who pointed out the viability of patenting Mafia, the influential live party game that inspired Among Us, Bromander replied: "If WB can patent a Nemesis System and Square can patent the ATB system we could patent the tasks system for example."
Fortnite's Impostors mode comes as a surprise given it's a game built on frequent collaborations with third-party IPs for the sale of character skins. Tran told PC Gamer Innersloth did not work with Epic on the mode, confirming: "although we would have liked to, and found out about it the same time as everyone else."
Bromander later said on Twitter: "Worst part is we've been actively trying to collab with them."
A representative for Epic told Eurogamer this morning the company has no comment to share.
"Everything in the world was already feeling insurmountable, so this was just another fun reminder of how tiny we all really are."
Programmer Gary Porter also weighed in:
This isn't the first time Epic has quite obviously taken ideas from other genres and added it into Fortnite. When Epic first added battle royale into the game, PUBG Corporation accused Epic of lifting ideas straight from PUBG. At the time, the PUBG team was using the Epic-owned Unreal Engine and working with Epic engineers to help build the battle royale.
And Epic has been criticised for cherry picking from popular culture - particularly for Fortnite dance emotes - without credit.
Among Us devs speak out about Fortnite's controversial Impostors mode
gaming journalism tho
mods for that type of thing been showing up since the early 2000s