And vice versa
[Update: Reggie Fils-Aime spoke with IGN about Fortnite’s successful launch on Switch (2 million downloads thus far) and made a quick comment about the issues occurring with PS4 accounts on the platform. As stated by him:
“We embrace working with a developer and enabling them to bring their vision to life. And whether that’s Fortnite, whether that’s a number of the other games that have cross-platform play on our console, from a developer standpoint that’s what we want. And we work hard with them to bring that to life. What competitors do is their decision to make. We believe being both developer-forward and fan-forward is in the best interest of the game.”
That basically confirms Nintendo has no involvement with this situation, likely meaning Sony is the one blocking these accounts. There isn’t any confirmation from Epic if this was mandated by Sony, so we’ll still need to wait and see.]
It was no surprise that Fortnite on PS4 wouldn’t be cross-play enabled with every other version, but something odd is going on with Epic Games accounts. If you’ve played Fornite on PS4 with your Epic account, you won’t be able to use that same account on Switch. The inverse is also happening, limiting accounts that are first used on Switch from playing on PS4.
When booting into the game on Switch with a PS4 account, you’ll receive the error message, “This Fortnite account is associated with a platform which does not allow it to operate on Switch.” Doing the opposite greets you with, “The Epic Account you tried to link cannot play on this platform.” Curiously, this doesn’t happen when using an Epic account from Xbox One or PC. Switch seems to be the trigger that makes your account incompatible.
It isn’t especially difficult to make a new Epic account, but Fortnite employs a battle pass program that players buy into to receive challenges and rewards. This weird limitation means you could end up losing out on the progress you’ve made should you accidentally log in to the Switch version while primarily playing on PS4 or vice versa. Even with keeping the original goods on PS4, that really isn’t good as it decentivizes you from choosing any other platform.
I don’t believe this is an intentional bug, but maybe Sony really is playing hardball. At the very least, Epic Games should be addressing the issue in short notice. A lot of fans are angry and you don’t want to piss off the massive userbase of Fortnite.
Fortnite accounts that have been used on the PS4 are blocked on Switch (and vice versa) [Polygon]