Fortnite Devs Apologize After Changes Reset Players' Bases

The survival builder Fortnite has been receiving quite a bit of attention while still in its Early Access stages, but it recently was subject to some more negative news when an update pushed by Epic Games resulted in many players having their base-building work undone.

For players who were working in the Plankerton, Canny Valley, or Twine maps, they were met with an ugly surprise to see that their Shield Bases looked quite different from how they left them after Patch 1.4 was released. Like any game that focuses on some time-intensive building efforts, waking up to realize that your hard work is gone can be quite a blow to morale, definitely enough to cause you to put down the game for a while.

Epic Games realized their mistake immediately and issued a response to upset players, explaining why the changes happened.

"Ok first we messed up in missing a HUGE part of our patch notes," the apology began on the Epic Games forums. "I apologize. We understand how much time you have invested in building your Storm Shield base, it's your home, your defense, your vision, we feel that way too. We will be dedicated in providing detailed at patch notes going forward."

The apology went on to explain that while the time spent on the bases isn't something that can be compensated, the resources used in the players' construction efforts have been refunded.

"In our haste to get this patch out we missed clarifying tweaks to the Plankerton, Canny Valley and Twine Peaks Storm Shield maps," the post continued. "We decided to make change to those maps to improve game balance at upper difficulties. Map changes require us to reset any base you have built. Building materials and traps have been refunded into your Storm Shield Storage, the storage overflows in cases like these so you have every piece of stone, every trap laid ready to be reused. We have to do this to avoid issues with built bases conflicting with the map changes. We know that the time it took to create your base can't be replaced, we hope that opportunity to rebuild with all your resources and past experience will allow you to make an even better base."

More changes will come to various systems in Fortnite as the game is continually updated, but Epic Games promises that the overall progression will never experience resets like smaller features might.