'Gooning has been vaulted in Fortnite'—Epic stops certain emotes being used in proximity so that horny teenagers can no longer mock-hump each other

Fortnite has finally taken action against the scourge of hormonal teens everywhere, and stopped certain emotes in the game being used in close proximity. The emotes in question are all moves that, when combined with certain other moves, may make it look like the avatars are engaging in a sexual act. Despite being fully clothed and having no genitalia.

The new limits appear to apply to specific emotes such as "poki" and "party hips" being used in conjunction with the moves "bring it around" and "ride the pony." This is in the party royale mode, and my favourite description of the change comes from one of the many unofficial Fortnite news accounts: "gooning has been vaulted in Fortnite."

A problem Epic does have here is that one of Fortnite's things is including popular contemporary dance moves, and a fair number of them are highly sexualised in the first place: which in the past has led to things like emotes being banned entirely within an in-game Holocaust museum. Because it's not ideal educating people about one of history's most awful events when Spider-Man is simultaneously doing the floss.

“Freaky” emotes have been patched to no longer be usable next to other emotes from r/FortNiteBR

An idea of the kind of thing this is stopping can be had from the below video.

Fortnite does have an audience that skews younger, and this move may have been inspired by some recent changes in Roblox, which two weeks ago updated its community standards around "Romantic and Sexual Content." These have been established for a long time but two of the prohibitions now specifically target content that implies sexual acts and "sexually suggestive content or behavior, including but not limited to: avatar bodies, assets and clothes, avatar emotes, or settings/environments in experiences."

There have also been some relatively minor controversies over Fortnite adding stars like Sabrina Carpenter, whose songs and performances lean heavily into her sex appeal. In a classic of the form, the Daily Mail fulminated about her "X-rated dance moves" appearing in the game, before using this as an excuse to post about a dozen photos of Ms Carpenter in revealing outfits. For illustrative purposes.

I've asked Epic for any statement it has about the change and what prompted it. I'll update with any response.

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