Fortnite adds a boombox that destroys buildings, players reckon it's overpowered

Fortnite's newest item is a boombox that destroys structures and, at first glance, it looks like it could have a huge impact on 1v1 firefights.

You find it in chests, and when placed on the ground it will destroy nearby structures every time it pulses its bass, which happens faster than once a second. It will rip through both pre-existing structures and anything that's newly-built near it. To stop an enemy's boombox, you just have to shoot it—but it has 600 health.

Reddit user DaggerSwagge put it through its paces in this thread, which is a very useful read. It has a range of three tiles, will take more pulses to destroy metal than brick, and brick than wood, and does not deal any damage to players.

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The upshot is that it's very powerful: it can take down an entire Port-a-Fort on its own, for example. I reckon it could have a huge impact on 1v1 firefights, especially between two players that like to build. If you throw it down at the start of a duel, it'll make it very hard for your opponent to spam walls.

You can also put in on the back of quadbikes or even planes, turning vehicles into mobile wrecking balls, which sounds like fun.

A quick YouTube search for Fortnite boombox videos will yield lots of players telling you it's "broken" and "overpowered", and users on the Fortnite subreddit seem to agree. Let's see how Epic reacts—as someone that enjoys Fortnite but isn't the best builder, I'd love to see it stay in the game in something close to its current form, but I can see why others will hate it.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.