The Fortnite community is currently enraged over the inability to play the game on the Nintendo Switch with their Epic Games accounts if they’ve ever logged in with the same account on PS4. They’re right to be upset, and the situation raises a big question that it seems like no one wants to answer: Why didn’t anyone warn us not to play Fortnite on the PlayStation 4?
The issue is a problem moving in the other direction as well; if you play Fortnite on the Switch, you will not be able to access your account through the PlayStation 4. But very few players have bumped into that issue, as the Switch version of the game was only released earlier today.
The error message that Fortnite gives you when trying to play the game on the Switch after playing on the PlayStation 4 is rather icy, and sounds like Epic Games knew of the issue and wanted to make damn sure you understood that it wasn’t their fault.
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“This Fortnite account is associated with a platform which does not allow it to operate on Switch,” the error message states. “Neither the Fortnite website nor Epic Customer Service are able to change this. To play Fortnite on Switch, please create a new account.”
Sony hasn’t gotten back to us. Epic Games gave us a “no comment,” even as the number of angry tweets about this situation pile up. Nintendo also declined to comment on the situation.
Epic Games itself provides a detailed FAQ about cross-platform play which indicates that the Switch and PlayStation 4 versions of the game won’t be able to interact, but nowhere does it say that playing the PlayStation 4 version at all means you can’t use your main account or any of the items you’ve purchased on the Nintendo Switch.
How the hell is this going on for so long without anyone explaining what’s going on? And if any of these companies knew this was going to happen, why were we never warned not to play the game on the PlayStation 4?
This whole thing is bad news for Sony. Despite no official statements about whose decision this was or who is responsible, a quick look around social media indicates that everyone blames Sony for the issue.
It’s not an unreasonable assumption, even if it’s based on speculation. We know Sony has kept companies from offering cross-platform play in the past. We know that Epic Games has made Xbox to PlayStation 4 cross-platform play available on Fortnite in the past. We know that Xbox’s social media team is having a good time dunking on Sony today. Whatever is actually going on, this makes Sony look like a spoiled child.
If Sony isn’t to blame for this situation, an explanation of that fact is hours overdue.
@NintendoUK wanna play some Fortnite later?
— Xbox UK (@xboxuk) June 12, 2018
Finding out your account is locked out from playing on the Nintendo Switch because you made the mistake of playing on the PlayStation 4 sucks, and no one warned us it would happen. The silence about the issue is only making things worse. Which leads to the biggest question raised by this problem: What other potentially cross-platform games should we never play on the PlayStation 4?
