Epic Games Considering Always-On For Fortnite

This always-on business seems to be getting a little bit out of hand. Keeping players online for who knows what, other than to control the game. The latest potential culprit is Epic Games, who has admitted, in no certain terms, that they might consider adding always-on for Fortnite.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun managed an interview with producer Tanya Jessen, who talked about a number of things including the possibility of an always-on feature for Fortnite, the zombie survival game. It's definitely not in place and it sounds like Epic is mulling over the pros and cons of adding quite a controversial feature.

Quite naturally, even the mention of an always-on for a game that also has a single-player mode and isn't an MMO creates an instant stir in the community, due to all the problems currently plaguing Diablo III due to the always-on nature, which dictates that players have to be online at all times to play either single or multiplayer.

After the internet rage took place over the original article by Rock, Paper, Shotgun -- which did not verify that always-on would be included in the game but simply that it's a consideration -- finding out that Epic would even consider always-on for Fornite, Epic quickly went on the defense and executed a damage control response. The company clarified that the exchange with Rock, Paper, Shotgun was all just preliminary talk about potential features. The clarified statement is as follows...

“We’re not talking about our plans at this time, mainly because that plan doesn’t exist yet. Fortnite is an iterative, living project and many things are still being decided prior to its release in 2013.”

So that's at least sort of good news for anyone who doesn't want to be bothered to rely on a company's servers to play a game. For those who don't know, even if you're always online it doesn't mean that the company's servers are entirely reliable, which is what cued a lot of aversion to the always-on from French and Korean gamers over Diablo III's always-on requirement, since Blizzard's servers couldn't handle the player load.

The other problem with always-on is that when the company decides to shut the servers down for good you can never play that game again...ever.

The idea that trying to play a game like Fortnite could be limited in its single-player offerings due to always-on requirement didn't sit well with too many players. Nevertheless, I imagine Epic will probably forego its inclusion if they want to support a healthy modding community as well as avoid being lambasted on every forum, aggregator and comment section on the web by raging PC gamers.

You can check out the original story over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.