Epic Games has weighed in on the whole underage kids creating user-generated content debacle that saw a Roblox executive in the firing line earlier this month.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Saxs Persson—executive vice president of Epic and overseer on features like Fortnite Creators, Lego Fortnite and Unreal Editor For Fortnite—strictly maintained that its own policy on creations was “18-plus” because it’s “professional labour.”
However, it doesn’t mean that the company seems entirely averse to bringing that age down. “Well, in regions where it is permissible, yes we should lower that age,” Persson said regarding monetising creations for minors. “But we started at something that is like, unilaterally: this is professional labour. People have signed up for professional payments.”
It’s a thin line for sure, one which Persson seems all too aware of. “There’s a lot of things to really think deeply about, like how you want to fund this ecosystem of creators and how you make creativity available to all,” he said. “It’s a goal of ours, obviously. There’s a lot of Lego creators that want to still express themselves, [who] can’t right now because of how these rules work, and we should work to mindfully change that, where we can. But right now we’re 18-plus.”
It’s certainly a more reined-in response than what Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza had to offer earlier this month, at least. Corazza came under some particularly heavy criticism shortly after GDC for his… unique perspective on allowing underage players to monetise their creations, with Roblox then taking a cut from it.
“You can say, ‘OK, we are exploiting, you know, child labour,’ right?” Corazza said. “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.”
