After Marshmello and Weezer, the latest artist to launch a high-profile collaboration with video-game Fortnite is Major Lazer. The Diplo-led group have remixed two of the tracks that players hear in Fortnite’s ‘lobby’ – ‘Default Vibe’ and ‘Default Fire’.
Meanwhile, the game’s publisher Epic Games has created a ‘Lazerism’ set of virtual items, including a dedicated ‘skin’ (a player character) and one of the famous Fortnite dancing ‘emotes’. The pack launched late last week within the game, and was available until Sunday evening. Epic Games are good at this “scarcity” lark…
Major Lazer got involved in the launch of the pack and remixes last Thursday, streaming a live Fortnite game with pro gamer Dubs of esports crew FaZe Clan. As ever with Twitch, the archived video is muted in places where it features “copyrighted content owned or controlled by a third party” (i.e. the music!).
But back to the Fortnite pack: the six items had an official price of 3,300 V-Bucks (the game’s currency) but were being discounted to 2,475 V-Bucks when Music Ally checked in this weekend. As a guide to how much value that is: the current price for 1,000 V-Bucks is $9.99, while 2,800 cost $24.99. Let’s just say that roughly speaking, the Major Lazer Fortnite pack cost around the same as two physical albums. This falls into the bigger picture of Fortnite brand collaborations though: already today there’s another non-music one, with the Borderlands 3 game.
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