Among Us has become the type of viral success that few games will ever achieve. It penetrated pop culture in a way that perhaps only a single other game has in recent memory, that game being Fortnite. The two games are wildly different, however, so they typically occupy different spaces in the video game discourse. At least, they did until Fortnite announced its new Impostors mode, which is so near-identical to Among Us that event Innersloth's devs aren't comfortable with what Epic Games has done.
Innersloth community director Victoria Tran offered up a succinct description of how it felt to wake up and find Epic was adding an Among Us mode to Fortnite. In her first tweet, Tran says that "it would have been really, really cool to collab" making clear that the idea of Among Us crossing over to Fortnite isn't the problem. Rather, it's that Epic has gone forward without contacting Innersloth at all. Further, Tran describes how Epic Games hasn't just taken Among Us' game mechanics, which she says is "fine," but also uses Among Us' "different themes" and "terminology."
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Tran elaborates on her feelings in a follow-up tweet, explaining that this kind of decision by a huge company like Epic Games leaves her, as an indie dev, feeling "powerless." She says it gives her a feeling of "lol what's the point anymore" regarding making stories and content, if a big company like Epic will just add something identical to Fortnite without attribution or recompense. Tran adds that "it feels exactly like being a woman/POC in tech."
But Tran isn't the only person at Innersloth willing to make a public statement about Fortnite's Impostors mode. Innersloth programmer Gary Porter also made a post on Twitter, though they took a different approach. Porter posted a map comparison between Among Us' map The Skeld and Fortnite's Impostors map, named Loop Control. His point is that the two maps are uniquely similar, though as Porter says, "It's okay tho they flipped electrical and medbay and connected security to the cafeteria."
Needless to say, Fortnite's announcement of its Impostors mode has clearly become a topic of conversation at Innersloth. Most of Among Us' devs haven't shared their thoughts. Others are trying to take it in stride, like animator Jake Clark who posted a meme where Fortnite's Impostors teaser had its characters painted over and rebranded as "amogus."
It's easy to see why Innersloth would be frustrated with the situation. There's a difference between creating an Among Us-inspired social deduction game mode and what looks to be a very obvious recreation of Among Us itself. But Innersloth is a small team and Epic Games has a very expensive legal team. There's no real recourse available to Innersloth outside of calling attention to the issue. Epic, of course, has yet to respond.
Among Us is available now on PC, Switch, and mobile devices. PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S versions are in development.
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