Fortnite copying Among Us with new The Spy Within LTM

Epic Games has faced legal action for Fortnite being derivative of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in the past, but that isn’t stopping the company from taking pages out of other popular games’ playbooks.

A new Fortnite limited-time game mode has been announced named The Spy Within. The creator-made mode serves as Fortnite’s answer to Among Us, with two spies trying to deceive and assassinate their way to victory while the rest of the players look to root them out.

“Several key islands have been infiltrated by Spies. Track them down and flush them out. Watch your back, you’ll be arriving at each location with limited information. We don’t know who the Spies are, so don’t trust anyone. We can trust you, right?” the announcement reads.

The Spy Within will come with a dedicated set of challenges with a variety of rewards therein. This includes a new wrap, glider, and skateboard deck. Though the skateboard deck features one of the characters from The Spy Within, much of the gear is Christmas-themed.

The game works similar to Among Us, with some slight differences. Each game involves 10 players, with two being hidden spies. The other eight players are called agents, and can win by collecting coins or identifying the spies. The spies win by assassinating all the agents.

As with Among Us, there is a group meeting feature that lets players vote one another out. This encourages players to utilize deception and trickery in order to win.

The Spy Within goes live on December 15. No end date was revealed for the game mode.

Why is Among Us so popular now?

Among Us has taken the world by storm, largely thanks to its sudden popularity with streamers. Two years after its initial release, a number of popular streamers including Félix “xQc” Lengyel, Imane “Pokimane” Anys, and Tyler “Ninja” Blevins began collaborating and playing games with one another. This increased its visibility and popularity in a big way, and Among Us’ free-to-play status on mobile and low price tag on Steam allowed anyone that was interested to get started.

From its launch on Steam in November 2018 to May 2019, it averaged single-digit player counts on PC. It peaked in September 2020 with an average player count over 180,000.