Fortnite will get an open beta by 2018

Fortnite, the years-in-development open-world action game by Epic Games, will finally be getting an open beta within the next 12 months, Epic co-founder Tim Sweeney told Polygon this week.

Sweeney wasn’t more specific about the timing, but did reiterate that the game will likely go through the same sort of process that Paragon has gone through in terms of development.

That means it will likely stay in open beta for a lengthy time (Paragon remains in open beta currently) and developers will use player feedback and analytics to help both polish the game and find the right direction for it.

The idea of pushing games out to the public before they’re done, not charging for them, and continuing to work on them is part of Epic Games’ relatively new philosophical approach to game development.

Sweeney told Polygon last year that he believes this approach to gaming is the 4.0 version of Epic Games.

For Paragon, this approach has meant monthly tweaks to the MOBA, some big, some small, all leading up to a major shift in the game late last year.

It’s unclear what this approach will mean to Fortnite, which the press hasn’t really seen since the summer of 2015. Back then, the game was working to blend scavenging, construction and shooting into a sort of open-world, living game.

Michael McWhertor, who played it for Polygon at the time, wrote that while it wasn’t quite there yet, it did have promise.

At the time, Epic said that a beta would be coming in the fall of 2015. As of today, the game remains in a closed alpha.