Fortnite Battle Royale update will add silenced SMG and buff the assault rifle

From tomorrow Fortnite Battle Royale's puny SMG might be a viable option. Epic Games is adding a silenced variant that will be the quietest gun in the game, and boosting the damage and magazine size of SMGs across the board. The silenced SMG will come in common, uncommon and rare variants.

The assault rifle is getting a big boost, too: accuracy penalty per shot is dropping by 20%, recoil will fall by 20% and the weapon's accuracy will reset 20% faster. That seems like a lot for a weapon that is already quite powerful (although I know a lot of people prefer the burst assault rifle). Let's see how it pans out.

While assault rifles are getting buffed, bushes will receive a nerf of sorts. The potion that turns you into a bush will drop less often, addressing player concerns that despite its 'legendary' rarity it was relatively common.

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Good news for rocket riders: that tactic—in which you jump on top a rocket fired by a teammate and ride it into an enemy's base—is here to stay. Epic Games never planned for it to happen, but now that players have discovered it the developer is keen to support it.

It also acknowledged that team killing is a problem, and said it's taking steps to address that, although it didn't go into specifics.

Lastly, the developer said it plans to launch a public test server in which it can trial bigger changes to the game, starting with "weapon and combat feel and accuracy". Expect more announcements soon.

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.