The UEFN payout metrics have changed multiple times from how they originally were when first announced.
While not all of these changes were necessarily bad, it is becoming increasingly concerning that Epic keeps moving the goalpost.
The current changes seem like a smoke screen for what they would prefer to do, which is to possibly decrease the creators cut.
Maybe they aren't happy with the results of UEFN so far. Maybe they imagined that the ecosystem would be in a different place by now. Maybe they aren't getting the return on their investment that they originally wanted. I don't know.
How can anyone expect a creator to convince new players to download a 70gb game just to play a UEFN map they found on tiktok? Not to mention, the current UI/UX design is extremely confusing for new players, specifically for searching for maps to play.
We are smarter than that, all the new players downloading Fortnite are going straight to Battle Royale, giving Epic an upper hand in this payout pool. And if anything, they will then go to maps camping the top rows, giving those creators even more of an advantage.
In my opinion, the payout metrics need to be changed to exclude "By Epic" games. They should not be competing in a pool that they make and change the rules for.
This may mean that the overall creator cut may go down, but that may be the cost of giving the average solo developer in this space a solid and consistent living, which is what many creators like myself simply want.
I see the direction Epic is taking with these changes, but it is still way too early and just seems like a tactic to further lower the creator payouts.
If Epic wants to move in this direction, they need to help us out. Most of the marketing and competitive events for Fortnite still revolve around BR, which may explain why many outsiders still view Fortnite as that.