Epic Games, the developers behind Fortnite, appears to be rebuilding bridges with Innersloth, the developer behind Among Us. Not only is the company publicly acknowledging that its Fortnite Impostors game mode is directly inspired by Among Us, the two teams appear to be teasing an upcoming collaboration on Twitter.
This follows a dust-up from August where developers at Innersloth publicly complained about Epic Games releasing a fast-follow game mode that so closely borrowed from core game mechanics of Among Us. Not only does Fortnite’s social deduction game make use of an “Impostor” character it employs a task system and special powers for the killer, both mechanics that help define Innersloth’s smash hit.
In the intervening months, it seems someone reached out with an olive branch to build better relations between the two teams. If you check out Fortnite’s newest patch notes, you’ll note that it directly says Fortnite Impostors is directly inspired by Among Us.
And on Twitter, the two companies’ social media teams exchanged some light banter, implying an upcoming collaboration. Fortnite has already featured other major video game characters, including Halo’s Master Chief, and Ken, Ryu, and Chun-Li from Street Fighter.
As Innersloth’s own developers acknowledged, they don’t own any of the core mechanics that have made Among Us a smash hit, but seeing a much larger company use those mechanics only after Innersloth put in the work to make them popular definitely stung.
It’s heartening to see that at some point, Epic decided the best path forward was to work with Innersloth, rather than pretending their game wasn’t an inspiration.
Update: When reached for comment, Innersloth community director Victoria Tran stated “lol nice.”