Fortnite Says it Enabled Monero Pay at Store ‘by Accident’
Epic Games’ Fortnite store has ended its brief foray into the world of crypto-pay – almost as abruptly as it began.
Source: Fortnite
Fortnite is a popular online video game, it has 6.6 million followers on Twitter, only.
The company’s Retail Row merchandise outlet last week began accepting the Monero token – famed for protecting user anonymity – as a payment option. Payments were enabled via Fortnite’s partner GloBee, a platform that deals in crypto-pay solutions.
The move seemed to take many by surprise, as no other cryptocurrencies were enabled as payment methods – and Monero developers themselves appeared not to have been consulted on the matter, retweeting third-party news stories several hours after Reddit users appear to have discovered the store’s addition of a Monero payment option.
However, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has now claimed that the Monero pay option was enabled by mistake. Sweeney tweeted, “Actually, Fortnite’s brief foray into crypto was accidental. We worked with a partner to open a merchandise store, and somewhere along the way Monero payment was enabled.”
Sweeney stopped short of stating whether Epic Games or GloBee had been responsible for the error.
Sweeney also added, “Many of us at Epic are big fans of the decentralized computing tech underlying cryptocurrency, however a lot more work is needed on volatility and fraud-proofing before bringing it to such a broad audience that includes younger gamers. […] Epic doesn’t have any cryptocurrency partners and aren’t in any crypto partnership discussions with anyone.”
Many of my young friends own crypto. They wanted vbucks & btc for Christmas so its not to early I think its the perfect time for the biggest game to accept crypto 🙏🏻 Instead of political money
— Nice (@nicenft) January 6, 2019
Monero’s Riccardo Spagni had previously speculated that a “lack of privacy” had led to Epic Games decision to allow Monero payments in favor of Bitcoin pay.
Fortnite operates its own in-game V-Bucks virtual currency, which players can use to buy skins and other items, while the Retail Row outlet sells physical Fortnite merchandise, such as t-shirts.
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