Epic Games and Cliff Bleszinski Clash Over Jazz Jackrabbit Rights in Fortnite Era

Epic Games Says It Owns Jazz Jackrabbit in Fortnite Rights Clash With Gears of War Creator

Cliff Bleszinski, a veteran Epic Games developer and the creator behind Gears of War and Unreal Tournament, ran into a legal snag while seeking the rights to one of his earliest game characters, Jazz Jackrabbit, from the company where he once worked.

Bleszinski says he made Jazz Jackrabbit when he was around 17. He later built the character into the lead of one of his first video games, which he developed and launched in 1994 after joining Epic in 1992. Jazz went on to become Epic’s top success at the time. More recently, after Epic brought Jazz into Fortnite as a Sprite in Chapter 7, Season 4 earlier this year, Bleszinski said he felt pushed aside by Epic after a series of legal exchanges.

Bleszinski wrote on his X account:

• After legal talks, Epic says it fully owns the rights to Jazz Jackrabbit and will not change course, even though neither side can produce paperwork on hand.
• He noted that he still receives payments tied to the game’s sales on GoG, which suggests documents must exist somewhere.
• He added that Epic is still willing to profit from the character in Fortnite.
• He said that if he makes a new version, it will likely be a spiritual follow-up.
• He shared that his early sketches came from high school, made when he was about 17.

Bleszinski also said Jazz was his first major success and always will matter to him. He explained that when he signed with Epic, he was still a teenager and simply thrilled to be creating games, and that those papers have long since vanished. Even so, he said he still gets the occasional check from GoG.com that Epic honors, which makes him think the records still exist somewhere. He said he is grateful to be paid for work he did more than 30 years ago, but aside from brief Fortnite cameos, he had hoped for a proper return for Jazz, either from him or a trusted partner. He said he followed the legal route, which ended in a dead end, and that any future Jazz-style project would need to fall into the spiritual successor category. He also said he still believes no one has fully solved the challenge of arcade-style first-person platforming.

Jazz Jackrabbit is not the only one of Bleszinski’s creations to reappear after a long absence. The Gears of War series returned to Xbox consoles last month with Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to his 2006 original. E-Day marked the debut of an all-new Gears title since Gears 5 in 2019.

Ryan McCaffrey serves as executive editor of previews and hosts a weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, plus a co-host role on Next-Gen Console Watch. He’s from North Jersey, so he calls it “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.”