Epic Games defends Fortnite matchmaking from controller players with kbm players

Epic Games defends the decision to introduce cross-platform matchmaking between players with controllers and players with mouse and keyboard. The Fortnite creator believes his estimation of player skill is accurate enough to make up for the difference in input.

Epic Games states that it is confident in its matchmaking system, so much so that there could possibly be a match between a player with keyboard and mouse and one using a touchscreen. However, analytics and feedback are closely monitored. At the moment the feature is still ‘rolling out’: not all game modes and regions have received the changes yet.

In September of this year, Epic Games announced a number of changes to Fortnite Battle Royale: the game is getting bots, which adapt to the skill level of their opponents. In addition, matchmaking is partly based on an estimate of skill, which Epic calls hype. It turned out that the hard demarcation between teams with kbm players and teams without was also removed. Not everyone was happy with that.

Cross platform matchmaking is a relatively young concept. Although it has been technically possible for some time, Sony, for example, did not have the desire to open its platform to it for a while, although it has now returned to that.

The advantage of cross-platform multiplayer is that the player pool grows. A platform with a smaller multiplayer population can therefore benefit from this in the form of easier-to-find play sessions. Another advantage is that a player is less obliged to be on the same platform that his gaming friends are on.

The downsides are more in the concrete technicalities: a PC is capable of higher frame rates and more accurate input methods than consoles, providing clearly noticeable and potentially unfair advantages to players. As far as we know, with Fortnite Battle Royale, Epic Games is the first developer to try to put all players in a single pool in an fps.