Sony Breaks Locked Fortnite Account Silence, And Fans Are Furious

With the extended gameplay trailers it debuted for titles like The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and Marvel's Spider-Man, Sony had arguably one of the best press conferences of E3 2018. While it would absolutely prefer that folks talk about how much they're looking forward to those games, the general public is instead talking about one thing and one thing only: Fortnite. Specifically, people are talking about how you can't use your Epic Games account in the freshly-launched Nintendo Switch version if you already used it to play Fortnite on PS4.

That, as you can imagine, has a lot of people angry, and much of that anger is being directed at Sony at a time when the company's upcoming games should be getting a lot of attention. Up until today, Sony has largely kept quiet on the matter, but it has finally broken its silence in a statement to the BBC. Unfortunately, fans probably aren't going to be any happier after they hear what Sony has to say.

"We're always open to hearing what the PlayStation community is interested in to enhance their gaming experience," the company said. "With... more than 80 million monthly active users on PlayStation Network, we've built a huge community of gamers who can play together on Fortnite and all online titles. We also offer Fortnite cross-play support with PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, expanding the opportunity for Fortnite fans on PS4 to play with even more gamers on other platforms. We have nothing further to add beyond this at this point."

So, Sony's response to the outrage is essentially "there are enough people playing on PS4 already and even if there weren't, you can still play with people on PC and mobile devices." Not only does that not address complaints, but it's basically saying that players should be satisfied with this walled garden Sony has created. Sony, it's worth noting, doesn't accept responsibility for locked-out Epic Games accounts, but when those logins work across every other platform as long as you haven't used it on PS4, it's pretty easy to guess who is responsible here.

Epic probably shares some blame here for allowing Sony to have this kind control over third-party systems, but for now, Sony is the one shouldering most of it. Sony has reportedly had little interest in cross-platform capabilities in the past, so it isn't hard to imagine that it played a significant role in locking Epic Games accounts to PS4. We'll see how this whole thing shakes out, but after today's statement, it might be best to temper your expectations for a quick fix.