Fortnite exec on kids making games: Island Creator Program is 18+ because "this is professional labour"

User-generated content, or UGC, has been a continued source of discussion recently, particularly when it involves minors doing the creating and, in some cases, earning off the back of it.

Last week saw Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza raise eyebrows with his comments on Roblox's openness to allow under-18s to publish and earn money from games on the platform. Roblox takes a significant cut of this, and pays those creators with in-game Robux currency that cashes out at a rate of roughly 3.5 times less than it can be bought, which has sparked accusations of it exploiting children as part of its business model.

«I don't know, you can say this for a lot of things, right?» Corazza said in response, citing teenagers who'd built up millions of followers on the platform. «They didn't feel like they were exploited!

»Like, you can say, 'Okay, we are exploiting, you know, child labour,' right? Or, you can say: we are offering people anywhere in the world the capability to get a job, and even like an income. So, I can be like 15 years old, in Indonesia, living in a slum, and then now, with just a laptop, I can create something, make money and then sustain my life."

Roblox provided Eurogamer with an additional statement after the publication of that story, similar to the statement it provided in 2021 after the original allegations of «exploitation», highlighting its growth in total payouts and emphasising that «more than 90 percent of the top 1000 experiences by hours engaged in were owned by developers who were at least 18 years old.»

Soon after this conversation with Corazza at GDC last month, Eurogamer also spoke with Epic Games' executive vice president Saxs Persson, who looks after Fortnite's various UGC initiatives such as Lego Fortnite, Unreal Editor For Fortnite (UEFN), and Fortnite Creators. Persson spoke openly about the «gatekeeping» he felt was «at the heart of why the industry is in a rut», but he also spoke a little about Epic's policy when it comes to publishing