Fortnite Needs To Stop Trying To Protect Everyone’s Feelings

Epic Games appears to be committed to “protecting” Fortnite‘s player base from potentially upsetting features. This is all fine and well, aside from the fact that nobody was offended in the first place.

Earlier this week, Fortnite received its v29.30 update and with it came the addition of a new setting that allowed players to turn off “confrontational” emotes. If the setting is enabled, players won’t be able to see a selection of emotes that Epic Games have deemed as too confrontational, even though they were the ones to add the emotes into the game in the first place.

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The emotes in question are Laugh It Up, Take The L, Whipcrack, and Make It Plantain. If any of these four emotes are used by an enemy whilst you have the setting enabled, your opponent will just appear to stand still and no emote sounds will be played. But this change is the latest addition to Epic’s plan to make Fortnite the safest (and most boring) game in the world. You know, aside from the fact that you quite literally kill people with guns.

Epic’s Intent Is Obvious

As a standalone change, you might think Epic’s decision to block confrontational emotes is strange, but ultimately no big deal. But when you take into account that Epic attempted to add age ratings to cosmetic items last year, you start to realise that the studio has a clear agenda for what it wants to turn Fortnite into, and it’s a bland, boring platform.

Back in November, Epic announced that every Creative Island and cosmetic item would have an age rating attached to it (this decision was eventually walked back due to backlash from the community). This meant that if one of your purchased skins was below a certain rating threshold, you wouldn’t be able to equip it on certain maps.

Cosmetic items such as the Auto Clutch Back Bling, which is essentially just a gun in a holster, were age-restricted and unusable in certain Creative maps. The idea was that children could play an ‘E’ rated Creative map and not be subjected to any form of violence. But if a child has the ability to access Fortnite Creative, what’s stopping them from heading into Battle Royale and seeing a whole boatload of weapons and violence?

According to Demandsage, over 60% of Fortnite players are aged between 18-24 years old. While it’s highly likely that this figure isn’t accurate due to players simply lying about their age when creating an Epic account, it does mean that a large number of these players that Epic is attempting to “protect” don’t even want to be protected from such minuscule things.

Or, if they’re not lying, does anyone aged 18 and above really need protection from cartoon-style weapons?

Focus On The Things That Matter

While Epic appears to be focusing on age-rating cosmetic items and blocking confrontational emotes, there are genuine issues that players should actually be protected from.

After Fortnite introduced its new Creative mode back in 2018, it didn’t take long for it to take on a life of its own. Creators can design their very own maps and modes for others to play on, and even get paid for their creations. But with such freedom comes the need to ensure creations are heavily moderated by Epic, something they have failed miserably at in recent times.

From blatantly racist to highly inappropriate NSFW content, Fortnite Creative has a plethora of maps that should be at the top of Epic’s priority, not safeguarding players from emotes and cosmetic items that weren’t an issue to begin with.

If Epic continues to focus on trivial matters that weren’t an issue to begin with, I worry about what the future holds for Fortnite. What’s next, removing the ‘Tilted’ from ‘Tilted Towers’?