Image credit: Eurogamer/Epic

It looks like Fortnite is getting a Roblox crossover. In the latest upcoming season of the game - named Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 4: Override - the world's biggest battle royale introduces a wealth of gaming properties to its world. Developer Epic's first trailer for the new season (below) shows off a slew of gaming characters from all eras: you've got Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the Hedgehog and his pal Tails, Joker from Persona 5, Mega Man, Kitana and Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, and more.

What's more, key art for the season - which you can see on X/Twitter - includes many more characters from games across the decades: Pac-Man, Street Fighter's Blanka, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, Lara Croft, and Geralt from The Witcher. Epic is clearly going all-in with the gaming nostalgia for this one.

How many gaming references can you see in the trailer?Watch on YouTube

But one addition stands out more than any other. It's pretty much assumed that Epic gets licenses to the biggest brands in the world, but in both the trailer and the key art, you can spot the deer from Roblox's viral hit 99 Nights in the Forest. Why is this notable? Because it was only a few months ago that the Epic boss who oversaw Fortnite's meteoric rise, Tim Sweeney, called out Roblox as a force that threatens to swallow all of the games industry.

"One view of the future is that Roblox grows and eats gaming," Sweeney said. "A lot of people are saying this online. What you have there is a centralised platform that has a single 'gatekeeper' that commoditises everything and takes more than 70 percent of revenue generated by 450 million users. So that's a real challenge to game developers."

But, despite Sweeney's comments, it seems there's not enough bad blood between Epic and Roblox to preclude representation in this big, gaming-focused season of Fortnite. Perhaps this collaboration is an attempt at leveraging Roblox's huge (and invested) playerbase as a way to reverse Fortnite's tumbling total playtime, or an experiment to see how many more people Epic can attract to the platform to offset the losses it's experiencing from its most recent round of layoffs.

99 Nights in the Forest is a game that exists within Roblox's platform. It's a sort-of horror experience in which players must explore a secluded forest where it's reported children have gone missing. You build a camp and try to find the missing kids, enduring 99 nights in the hostile environment and avoiding a creepy deer that stalks you. The game was released with Roblox on 4th March, 2025, and has since become one of the platform's most-played games (and given Roblox attracted 123 million players last quarter, that's really something).

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 4: Override will begin on 20th August.

Mentioned in this article

See 1 more