ENTERTAINMENT

Bucks price hike is a ‘direct correlation’ to operating costs

Epic Games announced this week that Fortnite's in-game V-bucks currency would be getting more expensive with a somewhat glib statement: "The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we're raising prices to help pay the bills," the company wrote. The price hike will go into effect on March 19th, the same day […]

By The Verge

• March 13, 2026 at 2:24 PM

Bucks price hike is a ‘direct correlation’ to operating costs Photo: The Verge

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When asked by The Verge, an executive declined to specify how operating costs had changed.

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Epic Games announced this week thatFortnite’s in-game V-bucks currency would begetting more expensivewith a somewhat glib statement: “The cost of runningFortnitehas gone up a lot and we’re raising prices to help pay the bills,”the company wrote.

The price hike will go into effect on March 19th, the same day the next majorFortniteseason debuts, and enough users have complained about the increase thatan Epic stafferacknowledged the protests on a post on Reddit.

But whenThe Vergeasked Epic executives at the GDC Festival of Gaming this week if they could be specific about why the company raised the price, they didn’t say much more.

“I think what we put out publicly is pretty accurate,” Andre Balta, Epic’s senior director of ecosystem growth, tellsThe Verge.

“It’s pure operating costs of running a business, and that was the main push.

We’re going to continue to, as a business, focus on creating amazing games and gameplay, but the price hike is a direct correlation to the operating costs.” Balta declined to put a percentage or dollar value on how those operating costs have changed.

Right now, $8.99 gets you a pack of 1,000 V-bucks, but after the change, that same price will only get you 800 V-bucks.

Other V-bucks packs will offer fewer amounts of V-bucks for their same pack prices, too.

Epic last raised the price of V-bucksin 2023.

“We’re just investing in growing the ecosystem a lot,” adds Steve Allison, GM of the Epic Games Store.

He says there are a lot of “amazing things that’ll be rolling out in the next, like, 6 to 12 months that, I think, when you look back, you’ll understand what’s been going on.”
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