Community complaints about blockbuster live service video games fall under a few predictable buckets. Maybe the microtransactions seem excessive or overpriced. Perhaps people feel that a game doesn't update enough. Players might be invested in the evolving meta of a game they enjoy every day, leading them to criticize the direction of the game. It's unusual, then, that Epic Games has found itself with a totally different problem regarding Fortnite – fans are constantly irate over the item shop and the inability to spend more money.
Fortnite's item shop is a robust beast that dwarfs most item shops in the entire industry. Every day, the shop updates at the same time with a new slate of goods, like skins and emotes. Like most games, Fortnite also has events and weekly challenges, which encourage players to log in regularly. Skins in particular might pop up in the item shop for a short period of time, only to be completely unavailable for purchase for over a year: if you missed it, you missed it. Anxiety over missing out is baked into Fortnite's bones, which is why social media accounts and websites theme themselves entirely around what's for sale that day. It's like Xur in Destiny, except way more intense.
