Fortnite is adding an LMG with a bipod

Fortnite's next battle royale weapon will be a fast-firing Light Machine Gun with a large magazine and a long reload time, Epic Games has announced. That sounds an awful lot like the minigun that's already in the game, which is great for tearing down buildings but not much else because of its massive bullet spread.

The image for the LMG shows a bipod, and I'm wondering if that's for more than show. Perhaps you'll be able to deploy it and fire from a prone position when you want to be more accurate? We'll have to wait and see.

A datamine of game files last month by Fortnite site Storm Shield One uncovered the M249 Saw LMG and, judging by the image, that's the one we can expect to see in-game soon. According to the datamine, it will deal more damage than the minigun (26 damage per shot vs 16) but it will fire slightly slower, and you'll have to reload after 100 shots. The bullet spread will be identical, which will make it impossible to fire accurately for sustained periods.

More Fortnite

What's new with the latest Fortnite season
The best Fortnite creative codes
The optimal Fortnite settings
Our favorite Fortnite skins
The best Fortnite toys

I hope it's different enough to give players a reason to pick it up. I used the minigun a lot when it first came out, and it was fun to be able to spray endlessly, but now I rarely bother with it.

No word on when exactly we can expect the LMG, but weapons that appear in the game's update panel usually arrive within a week or two, so keep your eyes peeled.

Read James's Fortnite review here.

Update: I initially wrote that the weapon had a tripod, rather than a bipod, which was pretty silly of me (although weapon tripods are a thing, apparently).

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.