Wayne

Everything Epic just announced about Discover on today's Let's Chat Discover stream. Epic just dropped the full plan on the Let's Chat Discover stream that wrapped tonight. Senior Directors Harold and John sat down with moderator @thesquatingdog for an hour and confirmed what is changing, what is broken, and what is coming next. Here is the full breakdown. PERSONALIZED ROW ORDERING GOES LIVE TONIGHT (5/27) The biggest news of the stream. Starting end of day today, the order of your genre rows in Discover is personalized per player. If you play combat, combat rows float up. If you play tycoons, tycoons rise. Your Discover will look different than mine. Context they shared: For You already drives nearly 10% of all clicks outside of Homebar. That data convinced them to push personalization across the rest of Discover. THE "WHY" BEHIND THE RECENT DISCOVER CHANGES Harold compared old Discover to a hoarder's house. Floor to ceiling with duplicative content, spam, and low quality experiences. The recent changes are not a single update. They are a sequence of moves to clean it out before the next phase ships. They are not reverting. The five things they said they had to do: 1. Clear out spam, low quality, and derivative content 2. Highlight the metrics Discover actually cares about (via docs) 3. Provide guidance to developers (thumbnail best practices) 4. Deliver and refresh better content more often 5. Overhaul the player experience (full reveal at Unreal Fest) THE 50K IMPRESSION MODEL IS DEAD. WELCOME TO ROTATION. John confirmed they cannot guarantee 50K good impressions for every island when thousands publish per week. Every new island now gets multiple shots across the first one to two weeks of its publish window. Different audiences. Different time zones. Different segments. They admitted rotation might currently be too fast for games that need big matchmaking pools to feel alive. That is being actively tuned. John said they are running a 24/7 war room on new and updated. THE DATA EPIC SHARED Since the end of April changes: - 2x more new islands are hitting 100+ unique players - 10,000+ player tier is roughly flat, maybe slightly up - 1,000 to 5,000 player tier is slightly DOWN - Lift is concentrated at the small island level getting their first shot John was direct: the Fortnite player base is roughly the same size week over week. Not everyone can win. Strategies that worked before may not work now. ENGAGEMENT QUALITY BEATS POPULARITY John's clearest message of the stream. The ranking is optimizing for deep sessions, retention, and players who come back. Not raw views. He said it plainly: if a huge creator drives audience into a game and those players only stick for 30 seconds, it will not help. In the new system it might actually HURT the island. DIFFERENT GAME TYPES, DIFFERENT METRICS A chat question asked how single player and one-and-done games are measured if engagement quality is the main signal. John confirmed Epic is building dynamic scoring where different game types are compared against similar games, not the whole ecosystem. Social metrics like parties and invites will weight differently depending on genre. Still in progress, but on the roadmap. THUMBNAILS AND THE "FRONT DOOR" VISION Harold's three to six month vision: players should not be able to tell Epic-made thumbnails from creator-made thumbnails when scrolling Discover. Similarity detection uses traditional ML image classification, not generative AI. They acknowledged the feedback loop is broken when the system flags devs incorrectly. A fix is on the roadmap. GENRES: 12 TODAY, SUBGENRES INCOMING They consolidated from 28 categories to 12 genres because devs were keyword stuffing tags and titles. The example called out: fashion rows full of cars and guns. Self select is now live. Subgenres are being explored. Roguelikes specifically flagged as a genre they are watching. SPONSORED ROW Harold said the story is not fully written. Fraud issues were solved in the last couple of weeks. Content quality issues are being worked now. As of this morning, Epic Picks now sits ABOVE Sponsored Row (it was below). They are aware the row can feel like a budget loophole for top creators. NEW AND UPDATED Almost every new island gets a shot in the New tab. Beyond that, there are now reserved slots in genre rows for new islands and low-exposure islands. They called these "newness boosts" and "updated boosts." Future plan: signal updated islands the way Netflix tags "new episode." LIKE/DISLIKE AND CCU An open test on like/dislike ran last week as a social proof signal. Continuing to tune and roll wider. On CCU under thumbnails, Harold said Epic is exploring multiple social proof signals because CCU works well in some rows but not as well in others. FORTNITE. GG With personalized rows shipping tonight, third party tools become less universally accurate. Harold said Epic does not have a full solve yet and wants to work with the community on it. TYCOONS ARE NOT BEING ARTIFICIALLY PUSHED John clarified Epic does not push the scale on any genre. Tycoons rise because they post strong engagement metrics and benefit from more genre row surface area. Harold compared it to deathruns in summer 2023. They are just riding the current wave. COMMUNICATION IS CHANGING TOO Harold openly admitted they should have shipped documentation earlier alongside the recent changes. Both directors committed to more transparency going forward. That means clearer communication on experiments and what might look like glitches, more frequent shareouts on data and wins, and a team currently working on better public roadmap visibility. THE UNREAL FEST TEASE Harold confirmed the next chapter of the Discover player experience is being deep-dived at Unreal Fest. He could not share specifics but said: "It's going to be a moment." Expect a major reveal around how developers tell their story inside Discover, the next evolution of front doors, and a roadmap moment. Epic also committed to making sure Unreal Fest announcements reach the full community, not just attendees. WHAT EPIC TOLD STRUGGLING DEVS TO DO RIGHT NOW Harold: invest in your front door. Thumbnail, detail view, trailers, cutscenes, clean game video. That is where players make the decision. John: what looked similar last time and got views will not carry you now. Stand out. Make your game look aspirational. Build something players stick with. Watch the full Let's Chat Discover stream on @FortniteCreate (YouTube) or @UnrealEngine (Twitch).