Arkheron's an interesting game (I'm about to throw a lot of adjectives at you, don't get scared): an isometric PvPvE battle royale-type action RPG where you and two other mates try to ascend a tower in the afterlife.

Rounds play out as you and your fellow echoes ascend a tower, having showdowns at the end of each floor where you take on another team before moving on. In the interim, you run around fighting monsters, picking up loot, and fine-tuning your build before you go onto the next bout.

But, as shown in the PC Gaming Show's exclusive interview, players had identified a large skill gap between the training mode and the game's core "Ascension" mode—which has led to the introduction of Spires.

The Spires game mode works very similarly to Ascension, except you have three shots to get it right. Basically, it gives you far more opportunities to learn and experiment, rather than simply getting stomped by people who have mastered the high-stakes Ascension mode.

I'm personally actually pretty hyped for Arkheron—I've yet to find a game that's filled the Battlerite-shaped hole in my heart, and I think there's a huge untapped vein of isometric PvP enjoyers who are rabid for something to fill that void.

It's also great to see that developer Bonfire Studios is really making use of the playtests it's been having—more than anything, good attentiveness to player feedback is what makes or breaks these sorts of competitive games, and finding ways to properly onboard players who might be a touch afraid of a steep learning curve is even better.

Heck, it's a trick that Deadlock, my current MOBA of choice, has employed with Street Brawl—get a lower-stakes mode where folks can get their feet wet and become familiar with your cast of heroes before throwing them in the hyper-optimised deep-end.

You can sign up for the Arkheron playtest on the game's website. Arkheron plans to release properly later in 2026.

Check out everything revealed at the PC Gaming Show.

Final Sentence is a "battle royale typing game," which is a weird idea but also one that sounds like it might be kind of fun, at least if you can type reasonably well. We first heard about it in 2025, when PC Gamer keyboard showboat Harvey Randall took it for a spin, finding potential but also that it was "a tad undercooked" at the time.

The concept is simple: You are sitting behind a typewriter, and a masked man with a gun is standing beside you. Type fast and accurately, or get one in the head. There's a round-based battle royale mode and a one-on-one duel mode, and a range of AI opponents for solo typists.

Six months after Harvey tried his hand at that pre-release build, Final Sentence launched on Steam, and while it hasn't been a huge hit, it's amassed a respectable "very positive" rating across nearly 800 user reviews. And now developer Button Mash is urging players not to buy the game—right now, that is.

"I want to make a short announcement about the upcoming sale so those who haven't bought the game yet can save a couple bucks for a coffee or a compressed air duster for your keyboard," the studio wrote (via GamesRadar). "Seriously, that thing is worth buying to clean years of dust and food crumbs out of your keyboard."

And yeah, that's all you're going to save. The amount of the discount wasn't shared but Final Sentence is regularly $10/£9.09/€10.25, so even at half price you're only saving a fiver. But hey, five bucks is five bucks—and right now, that's enough to get you Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, after which you can join the rest of us in being mad that we'll never see the trilogy concluded.

Anyway, back to the point: A post about the announcement on Reddit, entitled "This is literally the nicest thing I've seen on Steam" (and which omits both the name of the game and a link to the announcement or store page, which is not nice at all, although the OP did eventually add it in a comment), has attracted more than 33,000 upvotes and sparked some interesting conversations: Many express gratitude for the heads-up, some say the dev is just trying to avoid having to deal with refunds after the price goes down, and others claim it's all just a marketing stunt.

Personally, I say all of the above, and that's perfectly fine: If doing a solid for potential customers spares you some headaches and gooses sales, who cares if it's an intentional marketing effort? Frankly I think that's the kind of promotional behavior we should encourage.

Button Mash didn't say when the sale will start beyond "sometime near the end of this week," but when it does the studio will release an update adding real-time leaderboards to Final Sentence, along with "full localization of Knockdown prompts for all languages," Steam trading cards, and variable difficulty for bots. In-game leagues, a new result screen, and an OST are also planned.

"I know all you really want is more players online," Button Mash wrote. "We'll see how many we can bring in with this sale. Almost 350,000 people have wishlisted the game, so let's see what happens."

The Overwatch gang has finally arrived in Fortnite, and you know what that means. That's right, we're talking about Tracer's butt again. Fans are convinced that Tracer's backside got buffed in her Fortnite incarnation, and you know, I think they might be right.

Some quick history, for those who either weren't around 10 years ago, or are fortunate enough to have memory-holed the whole thing: One of the big controversies in the early days of Overwatch (and this is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I swear it's true) was the bodaciousness of Tracer's booty. First, gamers complained that an over-the-shoulder victory pose had too much ass, so Blizzard changed it and then other gamers complained that there was not enough ass.

Ten years later, former Overwatch boss Jeff Kaplan said the amount of ass actually "stayed exactly the same"—it was merely the pose itself that changed. As PC Gamer's resident knower-of-Overwatch Elie Gould said, a decade of water under the bridge had turned the whole thing into something of a joke, although there's no doubt in my mind that an undercurrent of resentment and rage continues to flow through some corners of the online world.

Which brings us to today. Just a month after Kaplan's comment, Tracer's caboose is back in the conversation, because some of the folks on the TracerMains suibreddit—and today I learned there is a TracerMains subreddit—seem pretty sure that she's been re-proportioned for the Fortnite crossover.

Tracer has a bigger butt in Fortnite from r/TracerMains

Look, I'm not here to objectify videogame characters or anything, but speaking entirely observationally and clinically, yeah, that's a big dumper. The Unreal Engine's really working overtime to render this one.

For purposes of comparison, here's the original Tracer tush that caused all the uproar a decade ago:

So yeah, maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that one of these things is not like the other.

Another angle:

The way I see it, there are two possibilities at play here—three, I suppose, if you include the possibility that we're all just imagining the maximizing of those glutes: One, the good folks at Epic know what they like and they're not afraid to let their freak flag fly, or two, the Unreal Engine is just naturally back-loaded, so to speak. I have no idea which it might be, but I hope it's the former.

As a conscientious videogame journalism professional, I have reached out to Epic Games to ask if they did indeed give Tracer some newly embiggened ham cakes, because that's the sort of thing I do on a Friday afternoon when everyone just wants to get out of the office and go home. I'll let you know if anyone replies.

Overwatch, one of the pioneers of the live service model, has finally come full circle with an official Fortnite collab this week. For years, Blizzard kept its iconic heroes close to its chest, but now they've been released, free to show up as premium cosmetics elsewhere in the live service multiverse.

It already felt like Blizzard was becoming less precious with its Overwatch characters after spending the last three years flooding the hero shooter with brands like Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Porsche. Collab skins went from being sorta like cosplay to near-copies of characters from other games.

In a world where Destiny 2 has a whole Star Wars-themed expansion and the stars of the Fallout TV show are earning killstreaks in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, anything is possible. So when the rumors of a Fortnite collab started a few months ago, they seemed plausible.

And here we are: Mercy from Overwatch has officially hit the Griddy, Genji is dancing to Cardi B, D.Va is editing her way to a victory royale, and Tracer is blinking across the Sandy Strip. Overwatch heroes are now skins in the game that took what Blizzard started and turned it into the business model that every major publisher is desperate to emulate.

Alongside the skins are recreations of popular Overwatch maps, like Hanamura and King's Row. While you're gathering loot, you can find Tracer's twin pistols which shift your view into first-person. It's just like playing Overwatch, if Overwatch were a massive battle royale where the only objective is to kill anything that moves until you're the last one standing.

There's something wrong about seeing Mercy, a support hero in Overwatch, carrying around an AK-47. Overwatch's universe is supposed to be a hopeful version of the future, and while there are major caveats to that, dropping these heroes into a completely different context renders them into the same charmless, plastic toys that every iconic character seems doomed to become.

It doesn't help that they all spout lines from Overwatch like you're pulling a string on their backs. In the trailer, Mercy floats onto the screen to say, "Heroes never die" like she does in the original Overwatch teaser cinematic, except she isn't really saying it to anyone in particular. She's just there to kick off more references as Tracer and D.Va join in with their own phrases from Overwatch. D.Va's "Nerf this!" is particularly nonsensical because, without her exploding mech, it's unclear what she's even referring to.

This is what the age of collabs has brought to gaming: An insatiable maw that chews up once-memorable characters and spits them back out as barely recognizable cosmetics for $19.99. Overwatch is just the latest game to be swallowed up in a trend that doesn't show any signs of stopping soon.

I used to think that the heart of a perfect Fortnite Battle Royale loot pool was two strong shotguns: a pump-action for raw one-shot power, and an automatic shotgun for drawn out fights. Pump shotguns bark the last word in expert hands, but spammy weapons are more forgiving if, like me, your aim is mush.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2 has disabused me of that notion. It's proved that more—more choice, more playstyles, more power—is simply better, so long as each individual weapon has its own quirk.

The recent addition of the Super Shredder, a funky shotgun-sniper hybrid whose spread shrinks to a pinpoint when aimed in, gives us four solid shotguns. The Chaos Reloader is the best, but the Iron Pump and Shredder are close behind. The Dual Hammer is probably the weakest but even they have their place because of their forgiving spread sustained damage over time. A friend who plays on a controller swears by them.

What impresses me most is that there's real intention and thought behind each one. They all enable a completely different playstyle—and each has weaknesses you must compensate for elsewhere in your loadout.

Chaos theory

The single-shot Chaos Reloader is clearly the beast of the pack. Its body shots hit like a runaway train, dealing up to 150 damage, but you can only fire once before reloading. Missed shots are brutal. I've died multiple times because I've missed, switched weapons, sprayed, swapped back to my Chaos and fired a blank because it hadn't finished reloading. You need to pair it with a reliable spray weapon and you can't just run, for example, a long-range DMR alongside it.

The Iron Pump's 2x headshot multiplier is brilliant, but if you're hitting the body its damage per second is piddly at around 80—one of the lowest for any weapon in the game. It demands precision and nifty feet to dance in and out of cover, matching your clicks to the slow fire rate.

The Super Shredder's wayward hipfire necessitates you aiming down your sights, making it harder to track your targets up close, while the Dual Hammer shotguns are consistent but lack one-shot power. They're therefore weak against enemies who jiggle in and out of cover, or during a box fight, where you might only have a split second to fire before your opponent builds a barrier.

My shotgun thoughts mirror my general feeling on this season's lootpool. Epic has nailed it. My tier list, which I update regularly, bulges in its A and B tiers. Pick up any three weapons and you'll probably have a viable combo: a refreshing change to the tired meta dominated by red-dot rifles. I've particularly enjoyed the renaissance of SMGs after multiple chapters of irrelevance.

But more than any other season in memory, it feels like the shotgun you pick determines your loadout and playstyle. Carry the Chaos and you need a powerful short-range secondary—an assault rifle won't cut it. Pick the Shredder and you'll want to keep your distance; the Dual Hammers work only if you can apply constant pressure. Switching guns between rounds lends variety to every Fortnite session, and a healthy mixture within a squad prepares you for every situation. Player numbers might be dwindling but I can't remember a better shotgun meta.

I'm known to spend much of my time in any battle royale game hiding in a bush, thinking I'm-oh-so-clever right up until another player puts one right between my polygons. As such, there's a wealth of content my cowardly self hasn't yet gotten to in Epic's all-encompassing headline act, but Fortnite Festival Season 14 promises nothing but hits.

Icelandic-Chinese singer Laufey gets top billing, with two themed outfits, plus themed instruments and auras to unlock via the Emberlight Music Pass for Fortnite crew members. Laufey's jazz pop beats also feature as unlockable in-game Jam Tracks but neither that, nor the fact Laufey is taking over the spotlight from Chappell Roan last season, is what I want to talk about though.

What I want to talk about is how Fortnite Festival intends to give all those old Rock Band 4 drum kits a fresh lease of life, as Pro Drums now allows you to plug in the aforementioned peripheral, or a compatible MIDI drum kit. Given that Epic bought Rock Band and Guitar Hero developer Harmonix back in 2021, adding this functionality has perhaps been a long time coming.

It's a really playful addition to something that already made this karaoke queen's heart sing. Speaking of belting one out, Mic Vocals similarly allows you to relive your SingStar glory days by plugging in any Fortnite-compatible microphone on both PC and console.

If you do decide to step into the Jam Ring, you can now also move around freely as you play, and the new Quick Mix UI offers greater flexibility in how you arrange your mash-up tracks on the fly.

I really enjoyed Harmonix's Fuser back when it dropped in 2020, and was sad to see it delisted two years later. Given that Fortnite Festival semi-resurrects that game's music mash-up gameplay, perhaps it's high time I venture out beyond the foliage and see what else I'm missing in Fortnite.

At this point what isn't in Fortnite? Godzilla in Jordans? Check. Our favourite virtual popstar Hatsune Miku? That would be a yes. So I'm never really surprised when I see a new collab announced for Fortnite, and the latest Toy Story crossover is no exception to that.

Teased in a short video that Fortnite shared to its socials, it shows a delivery car from Pizza Planet drive along and stop, followed by what seems to be Buzz Lightyear stepping out and walking off. I say 'seems to be' because we don't actually get a good look at Buzz.

This raises a couple of questions. First off, which other toys will join the collaboration? Some fans are wondering where Woody is in all of this, but I don't doubt he'll be announced as part of the collaboration for its release. I'm really just wondering if we'll get the chance to play as one of the aliens.

Not only would that be some excellent emote or voiceline fodder with 'The Claw' and 'Ooooooohhhh' but it would also just be pretty fun to run around and merk people as a little green alien. There's no word yet on whether this could be an option so I'll just wait and hope for now.

But the other question this collab has me asking is will the toys be human-sized or toy-sized. I assume they'll be the same size character models as the rest of the characters, as it would be pretty unfair to go up against a tiny toy that you can barely see let alone shoot. But I can only imagine how horrifying it would be to see a life-size Woody sprinting towards you. Again, only time will tell if this horror comes to fruition. But I do have a feeling we'll be having to deal with human-sized toys chasing us around.

For the first time ever, I am genuinely worried about Fortnite's future.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced last week that 1,000 people—about a fifth of all staff—would lose their job. The company brings in an estimated $6 billion a year but is "spending significantly more" than it is making, Sweeney said, citing a "downturn in Fortnite engagement".

Let's leave aside the question of just how Epic is spending more than $1 million per employee; let's also leave aside the depressing fact that one of the most-played, most successful, most monetized games of all time cannot secure the future of its talented staff, now sacrificed to maintain sacred shareholder value. Let's instead think about what this means for Fortnite The Video Game.

"What we now need to do is clear," said Sweeney in his statement: "build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events." More revealing than Sweeney's corpo-babble were the words of Fortnite producer Robby Williams, who posted on X that the aftermath of the layoffs would be "very hard and painful."

"Our teams will have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward but we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond," he wrote.

Fortnite could go lots of ways from here. Not all of them are dreadful.

I can feasibly imagine a future in which Epic renews its focus on its core game modes of Battle Royale, Reload, and OG. If that happens, we might continue to see regular imaginative updates, in line with the fresh loot pool and rivalry system introduced in Chapter 7 Season 2 (although it's inevitable some will hit, some will miss). That consolidation may already be in motion: alongside the layoffs Epic announced it was cutting three peripheral modes.

But it's not hard to envisage a very different future, one in which remaining staff are under pressure to drive up precious "engagement" with fewer resources. It is clear that maintaining the status quo won't cut it. Big number must go up—and the dev team, however talented, are swimming against the tide. Fortnite's cultural cache is waning, fan goodwill is leaking away, and the general public have less money to spend.

And if Sweeney thinks a full-strength dev team has "had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season," then what does he expect to happen when he lops a limb off? After layoffs some tasks are inevitably absorbed by, or more accurately poured onto, remaining staff, who find their days stretching longer, their inboxes bursting. Tired, stressed minds rarely produce the "magic" Sweeney is hoping for.

From what Williams says, there's no clear roadmap for what happens next. Staff appear to have been caught off-guard: principal engineer Evan Kinney said he was "confused and bewildered" after spending the past week debugging the new Rivals system while recovering from pneumonia.

The first priority for developers, quite rightly, must be to come to terms with the change and steady the ship. I'd be amazed if planned features were not delayed and burgeoning ideas shelved until it becomes clear just how bad the damage is. Then, somehow, they must look forward.

What happens in, say, a year if those remaining staff have not performed the miracle of both pulling in more players and convincing them to spend more money? Does Epic keep cutting, cutting, cutting? Does it look to the success of third-party modes like Steal The Brainrot, and try to copy them?

All this is taking place at a time where fan sentiment is at an all-time low. The apparent proliferation of AI art and music, revolts over price hikes for the V-bucks in-game currency, now, the game's official subreddit is full of the names and stories of developers who have lost their jobs—with posts about Sweeney's failures mixed in.

I know that Fortnite's subreddit is not its fan base. I reckon that lots of players either don't know or don't care about what's happened this week. But they will probably notice if updates slow, if the enormous ambition Fortnite shows season after season—new weapons, new maps, entire new systems—fizzles out.

I hope—really hope—that Fortnite's devs strike gold and reverse the trend of gradually declining (albeit still massive) player counts. But I can't help but fear the worst.

Yesterday's layoff of more than 1,000 employees at Epic Games was driven in part by behind-the-scenes issues with Fortnite: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said that "despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we've had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season." Very roughly, 20% of Epic's workforce was let go—the studio said just over 4,000 people remained at Epic following the layoff—and in the wake of that very deep cut, Fortnite producer Robby Williams is asking for patience while developers "pick up the pieces" and try to figure out what comes next.

"I appreciate the outcry of support and empathy that I've seen from the community today, and I just ask that you please show as much love as you can offer to those that were impacted. None of them deserve this and it's not at all reflective of their work or their impact," Williams wrote in a thread on X (via Eurogamer).

"What comes next is very hard and painful. Our teams will have to pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward but we cannot even fully understand what kind of impacts this will have on the game for the rest of the year and likely beyond.

"I'll continue to do my best to keep making the best game for you, and i'm confident that my peers feel the same, but please be patient with us as we navigate this tough time and do our best in spite of these truly gut-wrenching losses."

Maybe I've just grown too accustomed to receiving "no comment" or stone silence when I ask people about things, but I'm honestly a little surprised that an Epic developer is speaking so freely on such a sensitive topic. Because Williams' thread paints a remarkable picture of, if not chaos, then at least uncomfortable uncertainty in the wake of layoffs that clearly caught everyone by surprise.

This will hopefully be a temporary state of affairs. Sweeney said in the layoff announcement that Epic will hold a company meeting on March 26 "to talk about the roadmap in more detail," so developers may receive some clarity about the path forward then. At this point, though, the sheer scale of the bloodletting means it sounds like Fortnite, and the Fortnite dev team, could be in for a rough year.

Friendslop's officially made its way to Fortnite, as physics-based climbing 'sim' Peak now has a set of skins in Epic's battle royale. That should be music to my ears, as Peak's cheery scouts are impossible to hate—just look at their little faces! While they're slightly less cute in Fortnite's style, in large part down to them being taller now, it's not the design players are having problems with.

Crunch the numbers as one Twitter user did, and Fortnite's customisable Peak skin costs almost three-times as much as the original game. A Scout skin will set you back 2,000 V-Bucks, which is equivalent to $22.40 (or just $22.99 with the 2,400 V-Buck pack). That's worth 2.8 copies of Peak. In other words, you could buy the game for yourself and a friend and a half, and have a merry old time climbing a mountain together. And yes, that's just the cost of a single skin, not including the backpack, pickaxe, or wrap.

Before the recent V-Bucks price hike, a single Scout skin would have worked out as $17.80 (or $22.99 with the 2,800 V-Bucks pack). That's still 2.2 copies of Peak though, so no, not really a better deal, especially if you apply Peak's own game pricing formulation: 18 bucks is basically 20 bucks anyway. A similar case happened with Fortnite's Lethal Company skins back in 2024, which also cost significantly more than the indie game itself.

"That's actually a slap in the face to the Peak developers. Like: 'Hey, we at Fortnite feel our skin of your character is worth well over double the price of your fuck ass game,'" says one response on Twitter.

Being as Epic Games has just laid off more than 1,000 employees, with the company "spending significantly more than [it's] making," I don't think you're likely to be getting any better value for money in the future.

My recommendation? Get Peak for all your friends and family while it's on sale for $4.85, its lowest price yet, instead of a single skin. But hey, I'm not a Fortniter anymore, so what do I know?

Fortnite announced this week that V-Bucks—the last remaining currency with any goddamn dependability around here—are about to get more expensive. "The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we’re raising prices to help pay the bills," said Epic.

I'm not a Fortniter (no reflexes at my age, you see), but given the size of the game, my assumption is this news had an economic impact roughly equivalent to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Anyway, you might be surprised to hear the announcement didn't exactly wash with fans, who seem remarkably unfazed by Epic Games' rising gas bill and what-have-you. The community reaction was immediate, dramatic, and decidedly unthrilled at the notion of spending the same amount of money to get fewer V-Bucks. Some cancelled their Fortnite Crew subs (the Crew grant now only totals 800 V-Bucks, as opposed to 1,000), some vented on social media, some are attempting to organise a boycott under the slogan "You cut our V-Bucks. We cut your funding."

As an entity, Epic's been pretty stoic about the backlash and didn't comment on the matter when I reached out, but at least a couple of Fortnite devs have been out and about on social media trying to quell the rage. "Seeing comments like 'the Item Shop is the main focus instead of the game' hits me really hard," wrote Andre Balta, Epic's senior director for ecosystem growth, on X.

"It's not the impression we want to give nor how we focus our efforts. We put a ton of work and care into Fortnite’s gameplay and this focus is only growing. Paying the bills frees up our teams to continue driving stories and building stuff you love." Ted Timmins, Fortnite's design director, likewise chimed in to echo those sentiments.

But the horse seems to have bolted, and I'm not sure anything Epic could say—beyond "fine okay we won't make V-Bucks more expensive"—would mollify the angriest players at this point, who are currently agitating for a boycott of the game on March 19. And, yes, there are plenty of other players wondering if a one-day boycott will actually do anything, and suggesting a longer one instead.

If you're anything like me, videogame boycotts are something you greet with a hearty "Yeah yeah, sure thing buddy." The history of attempted boycotts in this mould—out of anger from proposed changes to monetisation or gameplay—is long and inglorious, and I can't summon a single example of one succeeding to mind. I don't even mean succeeding in its aims, I mean succeeding at actually getting anyone to boycott anything, even if they agree to.

But anything's possible. Perhaps the Fortnite community will succeed where everyone else has failed. Players certainly seem angry enough.

Well, here's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Fortnite: Save the World, the game that gave us Epic's absurdly popular battle royale, has been quietly persisting for the better part of a decade, just chilling in the shadow of its offspring. And now it's going free to play.

I know: was it not F2P already? Apparently not!

Fortnite: Save the World had a long journey into existence. It was announced in 2011, but didn't actually appear until 2017, after several delays and significant changes, and even then it only launched in early access. Epic's plan was to make the switch to F2P eventually, but by 2020, when it left early access, that plan had been dropped entirely.

In the meantime, Save the World had already been entirely overshadowed by Fortnite Battle Royale, which was originally conceived as a mode that could capitalise on the popularity of PUBG, before it was spun off into its own separate free-to-play game.

Fortnite Battle Royale became synonymous with Fortnite—if anyone said "Fortnite", they were inevitably talking about the spin-off, not Save the World. And you could be forgiven for assuming that Save the World had ridden off into the sunset (with other Epic live service games like Paragon).

But it's still here, and come next month you'll be able to check it out without dropping any cash. It's going to open its doors to the masses on April 16, and Epic's encouraging pre-registration by promising some rewards once enough people sign up, including a cosmetic skin.

Given how competitive the live service market is these days, it'll be interesting to see what the level of interest is in returning to proto-Fortnite. It costs nothing to check out, so maybe folk will be intrigued to see where one of the most popular games ever made got its start.

Fortnite: It's pretty popular. And it makes a lot of money, sure, but it costs a lot of money too: Server infrastructure alone probably costs, well, a lot, and Epic is also kicking out money to Fortnite content creators—a lot of money, in some cases. It adds up! All of which is to say that V-Bucks, Fortnite's virtual currency, are about to get more expensive.

"The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we’re raising prices to help pay the bills," Epic said by way of minimalist explanation. What's really happening, though, is shrinkflation, an execrable economics term that describes price increases imposed by reducing the size or quantity of the product in question.

There are detailed explanations and theories you can read about shrinkflation if you're into that sort of thing, but essentially it's a way of camouflaging price hikes because the price doesn't actually go up, so people are less likely to notice and get mad about it.

Anyway, here's how V-Bucks are changing as of March 19:

Nobody likes this sort of thing, but the good news is that Epic is also ramping down the prices of its various passes. The Battle Pass and OG Pass, which previously cost 1,000 V-Bucks, will cost 800 V-Bucks following the update, while the Music Pass and Lego Pass will drop from 1,400 V-Bucks to 1,200. So on that front, at least, things will remain relatively stable.

The Battle Bundle (the Battle Pass with the first 25 levels already unlocked) is also going down, from 2,800 to 2,600 V-Bucks, and Battle Pass owners will still be able to earn enough V-Bucks by completing it to cover the cost of the next one—it'll just be 800 V-Bucks, instead of 1,000.

I love a good moan about Fortnite: about Epic Games vaulting my beloved shockwave grenades, about the sorry state of SMGs, and about a baffling update adding off-brand weapons.

So I should give credit where credit's due. Through careful buffs and bringing back some older weapons, Epic Games has curated the best loot pool in ages.

I felt very differently a month ago. I loved Chapter 7's varied map, but one weapon—the Deadeye AR—dominated. No other rifle came close. SMGs were as irrelevant as they have been for most of the past year, and the sole sniper only felt viable in a three-weapon loadout alongside the Deadeye and a shotgun.

What a difference a few weeks can make. I took a chunk of time off as paternity leave and I've returned to find that bad weapons are suddenly good and that a new red-dot rifle, the MK-seven, is challenging the Deadeye's supremacy.

The most meaningful change has been to SMGs. Epic has ditched the fast-firing Dual Micro SMGs to focus on the Holo and Flex SMGs, buffing the damage and magazine size on both weapons. The Holo always had potential because of its optic, which made it easier to aim—now, it's finally fulfilling that potential as a stable, high-damage, full-auto weapon that shines over short-to-medium ranges. Its 200 damage-per-second means that when I've played a little stealthy and caught opponents napping, I've obliterated them before they know what's happening.

It's so good that for certain players it's worth ditching the Deadeye assault rifle. The Holo's damage fall-off makes it struggle at mid-to-long ranges but if you can control sightlines, slip in and out of cover and get close to another player, you'll beat the Deadeye in a straight fight.

The Flex got a similar buff and while I still prefer the Holo, the Flex is a more… well, flexible weapon. Its rapid hipfire sprays through builds and when you right click, it fires slower but deals more damage, and is surprisingly accurate at range. Its new larger magazine means you can theoretically deal more than 200 damage per second for more than four seconds before reloading. Lethal.

And this is all happening while Epic has added zero-gravity Flowberry items, the champagne-spray Fizz and the Mist Grenade. These make you more mobile and reward the agile playstyle that SMGs necessitate.

These SMGs buffs also bring the Deadeye sniper into play. It's still a middling rifle, and I'd love to see Epic try a one-shot-headshot beast, but it's now a lot easier to justify carrying. Before, it only really worked as a third weapon alongside the Deadeye and a shotgun. Now a sniper and SMG is a lethal combo, leaving you enough loadout slots to carry both the wing suit and shockwave grenades alongside heals. Pop shots from distance and shockwave in for the kill with your SMG—or, if you miss your sniper shots, fly to a better position with the wingsuit.

Mini buffs to other weapons including the tactical pistol and the tactical assault rifle have shrunk the gap between the handful of S-tier weapons—the Deadeye, the Iron Pump shotgun, the Twin Hammer shotguns—and everything else. And the MK-seven, another red-dot assault rifle, will outdamage the Deadeye, albeit with more recoil.

It genuinely feels like there are now a dozen solid weapons. One glance at our top-heavy best weapons tier list will tell you that, and the two weapons I rate lowest, the Enforcer assault rifle and Sovereign shotgun, are only low-ranked because of how strong the alternatives are.

The only sore spot for me is the Lock On assault rifle. God, I hate that thing.

As the name suggests, it automatically locks onto enemies when you aim down sights in their direction and, after a short pause, you squeeze the trigger for a three round burst that can't miss. I get why it's in the loot pool: to help players with worse aim. But it just feels unfair when you're killed by it, and I think it's actually too powerful in the hands of movement demons who can shockwave around the map and blast you in mid-air without having to aim. In my view the Arc Lightning gun, which has a forgiving cone of fire but limited range and slows your movement, is a better-designed weapon.

But one rotten drop in a pool this large is completely forgivable. Wallow in the warm water before it drains.

Fortnite is hard when your crosshair sways like a drunk sailor on rough seas. Victory royales are rare. Every lobby has one or two players who could've turned pro, probably, definitely, judging by the way they land headshots and judge their shockwave jumps. Just making the final five is an achievement.

But that challenge means winning is a joy. I've been playing since launch and my heart still pounds in the final zone—earning a victory crown leaves me on a high for a good hour knowing that I, somehow, have outplayed 99 other people (well, perhaps 49 other people, and 50 bots).

So how much easier would it be if you didn't have to aim?

That's the question posed by the Lock On assault rifle, a weapon added in Chapter 7 that commits the dual sins of feeling weak when you use it and annoying when you fight against it.

As the name suggests, if you aim in the vague direction of an enemy it locks onto them. It happens in four stages, four pips around your crosshair, each representing a three-round burst of the rifle: if you pull the trigger after stage two, you'll hit them with two bursts but if you wait for the full lock on, you'll land four.

It isn't overpowered. It deals just 10 damage per bullet at its base rarity so if you fully lock on you'll deal 120 damage. By that point your enemy knows where you are and can evade, build, or hide behind cover before you have time to charge it up again.

I still think it's bad game design.

Instinctively, it feels tailor-made for beginners or for those who struggle with their aim. As long as your position is strong and your crosshair is vaguely near your enemy, you'll hit your shots. But it doesn't work on those terms. Its damage is so low that you'll lose basically every time against any other rifle. Even if you land a few bursts, your enemy can turn and finish you off.

Yes, if you can get the drop on an opponent then you're immediately at a 100 health-point advantage—but if you're catching your opponent unawares they're likely an easy target anyway. You may as well fire with the Deadeye assault rifle and carry on firing. Even if your aim wavers, you'll deal more damage.

I think its true purpose is as a finishing weapon that can hit wounded opponents as they try to escape through the air. We know that Epic believes Fortnite has a "combat fleeing issue" and that shockwaves make it too easy to "escape an engagement". The Lock On is a direct counter to defensive shockwaves, allowing you to drop weakened enemies out of the sky.

But isn't that a bit unfair? Mobility items should make you difficult to hit, a well-placed shockwave grenade should give you a chance to escape. Otherwise, what's the point? By allowing shots to land for free, this rifle eliminates the thrill of recovering from a disadvantage, of turning a 1v1 on its head.

And besides, Epic has already nerfed the fan-favorite shockwaves by shrinking their stack size from six to four, so you already have to think harder before throwing them. Now, you need to worry about aimbots beaming you too.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the Lock On, however, is getting ambushed when you're fighting a different enemy. Getting third-partied in Fortnite, particularly in solo modes, is already frustrating because it feels like you're being penalised for being aggressive: by taking fights you're alerting nearby players to your location, allowing them to swoop and finish you while you're distracted. With the Lock On, that requires precisely zero skill. As long as you have line of sight you can wait for enemies to whittle each other down and then pounce.

I worry about the kind of playstyle the rifle encourages, and its wider effect on how 100 players play battle royale. It is not good enough to be a primary weapon, and it won't help up close like a shotgun will, so you really have to carry it as a third weapon instead of, say, an extra mobility item.

If everyone did that, rounds would be less dynamic and less active. The optimum way to use this rifle is to camp at a safe distance and pounce when an enemy's back is turned—or, conversely, to combine it with Fortnite to simply jump around the map, pinging enemies from the sky without having to aim.

Thankfully, the community seems to be shunning it. Everyone on the game's subreddit is annoyed by it, and I rarely encounter players who want to carry it. That's when you know it's time for a rethink.

The Lock On assault rifle is too weak to help newer players—and too annoying to make any stronger. The only thing it needs is to be stuffed at the very back of Fortnite's vault, never to be seen again.

The assault rifle and shotgun combo has dominated Fortnite for too long. Every time I refresh our best weapons guide they're collectively at the top of the tier list—and if the assault rifle has a red-dot sight it's essentially a must carry. This season's scoped Deadeye AR, for example, is by far the best gun in the loot pool despite several nerfs.

Only a couple of overpowered, and incredibly fun, revolvers disrupted the meta in 2025 (and even then, the Wrecker revolver was basically a shotgun anyway). It's too early to judge Fortnite in 2026 and I, for one, am enjoying Chapter 7's big, varied map, even if I'm grieving shockwaves. But having to carry the same old loadout combinations is starting to feel a little stale.

There's no quick fix, but I think part of the solution is two unloved, forgotten classes of weapons: SMGs and Snipers.

The last spectacular SMG was Chapter 5's beloved Thunder Burst, way back in 2024. It was accurate, versatile, and hard-hitting. But since then, SMGs have been outclassed by rifles at mid-range and shotguns up close, and they're only really viable if you carry them as a third weapon to spray enemies between shotgun blasts. Carrying three weapons means one less mobility, healing, or utility item, worsening your chances of a win.

SMGs should be low-recoil, high-damage beasts with accurate hipfire and limited range. They shouldn't compete with assault-rifles over long distances, and in close quarters a shotgun should still win most of the time, but they should be the versatile stalwarts of the in-between. An agile SMG-led playstyle that plays distances smartly should be viable, and right now it's not.

Getting them there might require boosting all their stats to the point they're overpowered: higher damage, lower recoil, and bigger magazines. But that's absolutely fine with me. What's the worst that can happen? If they become S-tier weapons, that would simply bring them in line with any red-dot assault rifle in the loot pool.

But buffing them alone won't be enough. Part of the problem is that assault rifles are just too darn good.

It pains me to say that—the Holo Twister from Chapter 6 is one of my favorite Fortnite weapons ever—but their accuracy, high fire rates and decent hipfire make them useful in practically every situation. They can dominate at longer ranges, but they can also be your follow-up weapon for a shotgun up close. This means you only really need to carry two weapons and you can fill up on other items to give you the edge in the end-game, particularly extra mobility or, if you're playing Zero Build, portable cover.

So alongside buffing SMGs across the board I'd want Epic to reduce the fire rate of assault rifles and make their hipfire spray less accurate. I'm thinking something akin to the Spire Rifle from Chapter 6 Season 3, which hit hard and accurately at long ranges, but its slow fire rate made it dicey up close.

One shot, one kill

There's another reason ARs have felt so dominant for ages: the painful lack of a proper meaty sniper rifle. Last year we got a parade of mediocre DMRs and scoped rifles that failed to dent in the meta, and it left players who love a steady, long-distance playstyle starved of options.

I'm not saying we should bring back 250-damage headshot rifles—although I'd love to see how that plays out—but we need to boost their DPS somehow. The Vengeful Sniper Rifle currently deals just 85 damage for a body shot. Combine that with its slow fire rate and you get a DPS that lags far behind any assault rifle.

Better snipers and SMGs would instantly make Fortnite feel more dynamic and give lapsed fans something to come back for.

It also gives Epic designers room for creativity. I wrote in November that the Simpsons mini-season proved that over-the-top weapons worked: a revolver that attached balloons to enemies, a full-auto infantry rifle, a radioactive slingshot. This season, we don't have anything near as imaginative. So why not an SMG that makes you run faster, or masks your footsteps? Why not a sniper that marks enemies in red when you scope near them?

Why not both?

Shockwave grenades, the king of movement items, Fortnite's evergreen purple propellants, have been removed from battle royale, and I've been grieving them for the past week. I feel stodgy and static without them.

The argument for vaulting them, as laid out by Epic's design director Ted Timmins, is that Fortnite had a "combat fleeing issue" that spoiled fights. "If we are being honest with ourselves," he said, "as much as we all love shockwaves, is it actually skilful to just throw one at your feet and immediately be able to escape an engagement?"

This echoes some but not all of the arguments made by streamer NickEh30 in December. He too said that shockwaves made escaping fights too easy—but added they also negate high-ground advantage, ruin early rotations, and outclass all other mobility items. Fans wondered whether NickEh30's prompted Epic's move, but Timmins denied that in his post.

I and most users on the game's subreddit disagree with the decision to vault shockwaves—I'll explain why in a minute—but I do sympathize with both Timmins and NichEh30. Shockwaves can be a crutch. I certainly lean on them to cover up mistakes: if I'm caught out of position without cover, outplayed at mid-range, or whittled down in a box fight I know that as long as I have shockwaves in my inventory, I can reset.

They create long cat-vs-mouse engagements that are decided by who has more grenades. If the mouse does, they escape, if the cat does, they can pounce. Aggression and outplaying your opponents often goes unrewarded because of them—and worse, rinsing your own shockwaves to chase an enemy across the map can get you killed by third parties.

So, I get it. But I think a blanket removal is too blunt a solution, for lots of reasons.

Sending shockwaves

It ignores how effective they are for pushing enemies. If you can land an assault-rifle burst from mid-range then shockwaves are the quickest way to close the gap and confirm the kill, reaching opponents before they can heal.

Shockwaves also level the playing field between newer and experienced players. Over the past year I've heard of casual players leaving the game because they keep getting rolled: whether you're playing Zero Build or regular battle royale, it feels like a Fortnite demon could ambush you at any moment. You're dead before you can fight back, but shockwaves are a lifeline, a chance to fight another day on more favorable terms.

Also, the "combat fleeing" problem applies to basically every meaningful movement item. The launch pad, which remains in the game, flings you a mile in the air and lets you travel further than a shockwave. Crash Pad Jrs, which are less versatile, have essentially replaced shockwaves and they too can help you escape. You could argue that they remain on the ground after you use them to escape, so any pursuer can use those same pads to follow you, but skilled players will throw them down, bounce off them, then shoot them in mid-air to burst them, rendering them useless for anyone else.

The final reason I think vaulting them is a mistake, and perhaps the most important, is that shockwaves are fun!

Their zappy noise, their sheer speed as you ping away from them, crashing through brick and wood and stone. I for one play Fortnite for its fast, arcadey chaos, and shockwaves embody that. I don't want everyone in the lobby worrying about high ground and positioning, I want to see players dropping out of the sky onto an enemy's head, blasting a shotgun and, as if pulled by a giant elastic band, pinging back from where they came in a burst of purple light.

Without them, rounds are slower and every battle is prolonged because nobody has enough mobility to push an advantage. This is especially apparent in Zero Build, where I spend most of my time. When you damage somebody they can plonk a Port-a-Bunker at their feet and heal up and unless you have Crash Pads, which are less common than shockwaves, there's almost nothing you can do. Players are less willing to take risks that could leave them out of position, so they play more passive.

Epic Games has promised shockwaves will return in a "special February update" that's likely linked to Valentine's Day. How long they'll last I'm not sure, but I think there's a way to make everyone happy. If the problem is "combat fleeing" then let's find a way to make shockwaves reward aggression.

I can think of two solutions that are probably flawed, but I'm sure Epic's experts could come up with better.

First, if every player you killed dropped a single shockwave grenade, then the most aggressive players in the lobby would stack them quickest, and would never be caught short when chasing their prey. It'd make matches faster and more bloodthirsty, but more passive players could still get them off bots or find them as rare drops in chests.

My second idea—probably unworkable, but here we go—what if the distance you travelled from a shockwave diminished as your health dropped? So at 50% health, you travelled half as far as a fully-healed player? Fleeing when you're wounded would be more difficult, while still allowing aggressive players to push and confirm their kills.

These might seem drastic but then again, I'm desperate. They have defined the way I and plenty of others have played over the past couple of years.

Shockwaves, we miss you.

Just a few days after the massively popular Fortnite game Steal the Brainrot took advantage of a rules change to roll out paid wheel-spins for prizes—gambling, in other words—Epic has announced another incoming rule change that seems pretty directly aimed at putting a stop to it.

The new rule was announced on X and the Fortnite Creative subreddit, and is set to take effect on January 20. It states:

"Do not offer any in-island transactions that directly or indirectly influence prize wheels in any way. For example, you must not offer as an in-island transaction a 'spin' or 'increased luck' for a prize wheel."

Examples of newly disallowed transactions are listed on Epic's developer documentation page:

• A luck boost that can improve the outcomes on a prize wheel
• In-game content that can be used to purchase a spin on a prize wheel
• Any spin on a prize wheel, such as a single spin, extra spin, or bundle of spins.

It's not mentioned by name, but this would seem to be pretty much a direct result of the Steal the Brainrot controversy that erupted earlier this week. For years, Epic did not allow Fortnite game creators to sell items directly to players from within their games, but that all changed on January 9, when the rule was lifted in pursuit of making Fortnite a little more Roblox-like.

It took almost no time for Steal the Brainrot, one of the biggest third-party Fortnite games, to make the obvious move: It began selling a "Present Rot" bundle for 4,900 V-Bucks (a bundle of 5,000 V-Bucks costs $37) and, more insidiously, launched a virtual wheel players could spin for various in-game effects or small amounts of in-game cash—for 100 V-Bucks a spin.

That in particular did not go over well with players and creators alike: Fortnite content partner Moon wrote on X that "the most popular UEFN game is now a gambling game targeted towards kids who don't know any better. They will mindlessly spend thousands of v-bucks for a CHANCE to get better in-game items, and they will fall into this trap / loop every single time they find a map with little things they like."

So while this new rule isn't called the Brainrot Exclusion or anything like that, it pretty clearly targets it: There may be other Fortnite games offering similar wheels, but Steal the Brainrot is the biggest of the bunch, and overtly targeted to a younger audience. Brian Sharon, senior communications manager at Epic Games, told PC Gamer the company will "continually review developer practices and make updates to our ecosystem rules accordingly."

Back in September, Epic Games announced that it would enable "in-island transactions" in Fortnite, meaning that makers of Fortnite islands would be able to sell items directly from within their creations—part of an unspoken effort to make the game, and the revenues it pulls in, a little more Roblox-like. Originally planned to roll out in December, the DIY microtransactions didn't end up going live until January 9, immediately after which things started going sideways.

Steal the Brainrot, one of the most popular third-party games on Fortnite, moved very quickly to take advantage of the new policy once it went alive, and it was not especially gentle in its approach. As noted by IGN, Steal the Brainrot now offers a "Present Rot" bundle for 4,900 V-Bucks—that's $37, if you buy a bundle of 5,000 V-Bucks.

You can also, if you like, spin a virtual wheel for a shot at various in-game effects or small amounts of cash—for 100 V-Bucks a spin.

Fortnite map maker Richytoons also called out the Steal the Brainrot developers, saying, "You make us all look bad with this kind of stuff."

"The most popular UEFN game is now a gambling game targeted towards kids who don’t know any better," Fortnite content partner Moon wrote in another message on X. "They will mindlessly spend thousands of v-bucks for a CHANCE to get better in-game items, and they will fall into this trap / loop every single time they find a map with little things they like."

"This whole thing sucks," one redditor wrote from the perspective of a parent whose children are big into Fortnite. "Turns Fortnite into a mess to try and let my kids play unsupervised. They know not to buy anything from the regular store, but how are third party 'devs' with no moral compass going to obfuscate their microtransactions in new ways that are going to be intentionally designed to trick kids into spending money."

Numerous other redditors, however, responded to say that it's up to parents, and not game developers, to control what their kids spend money on. It's an ironic reaction, given the very loud upset over loot boxes in videogames not so many years ago: Epic Games itself, you may recall, was sued over the presence of "predatory" loot boxes in Fortnite Save the World, which were eventually removed from the game "because we realized that some players were repeatedly disappointed by not receiving the random items they hoped for," Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said at the time. "Players should know upfront what they are paying for when they make in-game purchases."

That's not the only time Sweeney has spoken out against loot boxes: During a DICE keynote in 2020 he asked his audience, "Do we want to be like Las Vegas, with slot machines ... or do we want to be widely respected as creators of products that customers can trust?"

It's only been a day into the microtransaction Fortnite update, and we already have Steal The Brainrot, a game whos main demographic is kids, offering lootboxes / mystery-boxes which is gambling.#Fortnite #FortniteNews

— @newsfortnite.bsky.social (@newsfortnite.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T22:57:41.283Z

To be clear, Epic is not the creator of Steal the Brainrot and so isn't responsible for the addition of high-price microtransactions and gambling, but it does allow and enable them to happen on its platform. I'm a pretty big proponent of letting adults do what they want with their money—go ahead and preorder that game you want, I don't care—but games like Steal the Brainrot are targeted first and foremost at younger kids, which is what makes all of this so gross. Fortnite does offer parental controls, including the ability to disable paying for randomized items, but if there's one thing the entire history of videogames has taught us, is that's parental controls have limited utility when it comes to keeping kids from getting into what they want.

It may be that this is a classic unforeseen outcome and Epic will adjust its policies accordingly, but it may also view Steal the Brainrot's pricy MTX and gambling (and whatever other examples inevitably follow) as an unfortunate but necessary by-product of online freedom—the repugnant price we pay for the greater good. For now, the company is standing pat.

"The existing offers in Steal the Brainrot follow our rules and guidelines," Brian Sharon, senior communications manager at Epic Games, told PC Gamer. "We will continue to update our rules and guidelines as needed (see our changelog). Developers must stay within the 50-5,000 V-Bucks price range and make the numerical odds transparent when offering paid random items."

For a hearty chunk of 2025, Fortnite was fallow.

It'd be an exaggeration to say the game's subreddit was pure misery between June and November, but there was more than enough gloom to go around: the novelty of a Star Wars cameo quickly wore off and the next two seasons, Super and Shock 'N Awesome, felt bland and messy. When players finally departed Oninoshima, Chapter 6's map, it was a sloppy soup of disconnected ideas, with First Order bases straddling bug-fighting military outposts and buildings from feudal Japan.

I struggled to cajole my usual teammates to install updates over this period, let alone dedicate an evening to the game. I wasn't alone—the peak player count regularly dipped below 1.5m over this period, which would've seemed unthinkable a year ago.

Yet 2025 also had some of my favorite Fortnite moments in years.

The dopaminergic Blitz Royale arrived in June, and I played nothing else for weeks. The Fortnite Simpsons, complete with a standalone shrunken map, was surely one of the game's greatest-ever seasons. Random boss spawns meant literally anyone had a chance of grabbing exotic weapons, and it showed how a few wacky items can transform battle royale for the better (I'm thinking, in particular, of the exotic Mr Blasty revolver, which hoisted players into the sky when you shot them.)

At the end of that Simpsons mini season, the Chapter 6 finale Zero Hour drew over 10 million players: more than triple the peak player count of any game on Steam, ever. Fortnite is clearly still culturally relevant, even if some of its veteran players have migrated elsewhere.

And Chapter 7 is, so far, refreshing. It has a balanced loot pool of strong weapons including three solid shotguns, unique locations with hidden secrets, and a smattering of the cartoonish oddities that make Fortnite special, such as the DeLorean car that transports you back in time to find weapons from previous chapters. Player counts tick back up.

I'm hopeful that as we move into 2026, the rest of Chapter 7 will continue to surprise us. Its overarching theme—the West Coast and Hollywood—is broad enough to tie lots of seemingly disparate concepts together. There are very few games where South Park characters could conceivably dance with James Bond without breaking the fiction, but both are rumored collaborations (I'm imagining a slapstick South Park shotgun and an outlandish Bond gadget, like a pen that fires an explosive dart, shaking up the meta).

Nearly a decade into Fortnite, Epic has shown that it is still willing to take big creative risks, and that is promising. For Chapter 7 the studio added ragdoll physics and self-revive, reset gold between each match and made some of the reboot vans—where you can respawn downed teammates—driveable, so you can chuck your allies in and scoot away.

Each of those on its own could have derailed the new season's start. Each, at least in my eyes, has worked. I love that vending machines actually mean something now, and gobbling gold from a cash register can genuinely transform your loadout.

So, low troughs, high peaks. No doubt some fans enter 2026 full of optimism while others, especially anybody who hasn't dived into Chapter 7 yet, might feel they're done with Fortnite.

But I'd also understand if your overriding feelings about Fortnite had nothing to do with the loot pool or map, and you're instead just exasperated about Epic's insistence on generative AI.

'Doesn't belong in Fortnite'

Mollie wrote earlier this week that developers are "limit-testing" players with increasingly egregious forms of gen AI that are both boring and damaging. Epic Games is a prime offender: CEO Tim Sweeney has insisted that "AI will be involved in nearly all future production". Suspected AI art and music has already annoyed players in Chapter 7, as Jody wrote at the start of this month (it should be pointed out that one of the suspected AI artworks did not, in fact, use AI).

Gen AI in Fortnite doesn't divide players, it unites them. In a Reddit poll, more than 80% of respondents, or nearly 4,000 people, said gen AI "doesn't belong in Fortnite", a game that makes billions a year and could afford to shower artists and musicians with actual gold V-bucks.

I'm convinced there's nothing for Fortnite to gain. Gen AI can only harm this community. If Tim Sweeney truly believes most games will be produced with AI, then having it in Fortnite offers no draw, no differentiation—it can only drive players away, as I'm sure it already has. "I really hope there's enough backlash from the community to have them change all the AI-generated slop to actual artwork done by real artists," wrote one heavily upvoted Redditor.

It's left me with an uncomfortable taste as 2025 draws to a close.

And it's a reminder that Fortnite is, as always, complicated. Exciting. Infuriating.

Less than an hour ago I lived in a world where I did not know what frotting was. It was not too long ago that Epic was also living in that same world, if its most recently pulled trailer is any indication.

As reported by TheGamer, the developer has pulled an accolades trailer for Fortnite Chapter 7 after fans pointed out that one unassuming word had slipped through the rest of its attempt to be edgy with censored quotes pulled from social media. It featured fake joke quotes like "**** the Dark Voyager" from "the bus driver" (understandable, since the Dark Voyager attacked and was presumed to have killed the bus driver at the beginning of the chapter) and less fake quotes such as "Like a ******* fever dream" from X account FN Posting.

Then, the post in question. Its message in keeping with the trailers tone: "The best ******* game ever man". Its issue, however, lies within the one saying it: Jonesy Frotting over on X.

If like me you were equally uncultured in what frotting is, here we go. It's essentially the sexual act of rubbing two penises together—a step up from over-the-clothes dry humping, if you will. It's one of those things I'd expect not to be familiar with if you're lacking the appendage in question, but Google tells me it's rather popular.

"Someone read that, then someone was sent it, then someone edited it, someone approved it, and then someone posted it," a Reddit user commented on the situation. "There was probably more people than that involved and no one caught this. Unless, unlikely, it was one person the whole way." Another user replied: "Very funny to me that the entire Epic Games team doesn't know what frotting is."

The account in question briefly waded in over on X too, asking "am I genuinely gonna be the reason why someone's gonna be losing their job today" following the trailer's deletion.

If I was the poor intern/social media manager/Epic employee in question here, I would be absolutely mortified by this entire situation. But I'm not, so forgive me for saying it's kind of funny. Listen, it's the last working week for much of the corporate world and December is a real burnout of a month for many of us—I am not in the slightest bit surprised that a not-quite-mainstream sexual act has slipped through some censorship cracks at the company.

Whether the trailer will come back sans-frotting is yet to be seen, but in the grand scheme of things it feels like an incredibly minor cock-up on Epic's part. Pardon the pun.

Now that its popular Simpsons-themed mini-season is over, Fortnite Chapter 7 is live, complete with Kill Bill collaboration and a censored version of the Pussy Wagon. That's not what players are talking about, though. What's got them up in arms now is that some of the new art for this chapter looks AI-generated.

The smoking gun is a poster of a yeti relaxing in a hammock, feet dangling over the edge, which clearly has nine toes. After all this time, AI art still struggles with hands and feet. I mean, I can't draw hands and feet either, but at least I know not to draw four toes on one foot and five toes on the other.

Other billboards and paintings are being called out for having the smeary look common to a lot of AI art, and an anime-style spray of Marty McFly from Back to the Future looks enough like the Studio Ghibli AI knockoffs that briefly became the internet's favorite thing it's been looked askance at as well. (It's the same art style as the calling cards from Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.)

"IIRC, the Marty McFly spray is part of the Battle Pass, so you're paying for that", says one forum user. "Between this and the next season which is rumored to be Harry Potter themed, I'm done with this game."

Sweeney's recent comments on the supposed inevitability of AI in every part of game production have brought him into the crosshairs on Reddit. "The real question I'm surprised nobody has thrown at Sweeney", one user asks, "if AI can do a lot of the hard work, why don't we just replace him with AI?"

We learned last week that the realm of Fortnite, the real 'everything app,' will be expanding its borders even further through the adoption of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill—specifically an "unfilmed scene" entitled The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge. A colorful videogame filled with cartoonish characters struck me as an odd thing to mash up with Tarantino's signature violence and profanity, but now we've got a brief teaser giving us a better idea of what's in store, and I have to be honest: I was absolutely correct.

For those who haven't seen Kill Bill, or maybe just forgot, one of the film's secondary fights is a showdown between The Bride and Gogo Yubari, a teenage psycho killer in the employ of O-Ren Ishii, head of the yakuza in Tokyo. Gogo dies, rather badly (spoiler, sorry), and then, well, so does everyone else.

The unfilmed scene in Fortnite will focus on Gogo's sister Yuki, whose existence (as far as I can remember, anyway) went entirely unmentioned in the film. Based on the teaser, Yuki is basically Gogo, except maybe a little psychotically peppier and with a fondness for guns rather than a meteor hammer.

The first thing I noticed in the teaser is a change to the Pussy Wagon, the famous vehicle driven in the film by Buck, who's here to converse with patients at a safe and respectful distance. It's been, you might say, Fortnite-ified.

This is the Pussy Wagon in the film:

And this how it appears in Fortnite—I'm no expert in the field, but I'm pretty sure that's Meowscles:

It's not a big deal as these things go, nor is the first time someone's had to put the PG13 filter on the ol' PW: In televised edits of Kill Bill it's typically CGI'ed to be the Party Wagon. But it's a real reminder of the incongruity of the whole thing.

We get more of that when Peely shows up (because of course Peely shows up), only to be yelled at by Uma Thurman. He just wanted to help!

Look, I get that Fortnite is an 'open to all comers' kind of thing: As PC Gamer editor Rich Stanton pointed out when this was first announced, "you'll soon be able to pitch the Bride against characters from the Simpsons, Star Wars, WWE, King of the Hill, Squid Game, KPop Demon Hunters, Mortal Kombat, the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and countless others.

And yes, a lot of those properties—Mortal Kombat is one obvious pick—are very violent. But even in that context, Tarantino's work stands out as a strange fit for Fortnite: His violence is cartoonish but also extremely intimate, and that gives it an impact that games like Fortnite can't even come close to. (And then there's the dialog, which is beyond the scope of this conversation, but you know what I'm talking about.)

But who knows? Maybe this collaboration will be a big hit, and Epic and Tarantino will move ahead with new partnerships in the future. By this time next year we could be tying Homer Simpson to a chair and cutting his ear off!

First things first, though. Yuki's revenge will premiere in Fortnite at 2 pm ET on November 30, with doors opening (in a metaphorical sense) 30 minutes prior. If you miss it (or just don't play Fortnite) you can also see Yuki's Revenge in Kill Bill: the Whole Bloody Affair, a five-hour cinematic monstrosity that kicks off a limited run in the US, UK, and Canada on December 5.

Fortnite's The Simpsons mini-season is an undeniable success.

Average player numbers for November are the highest since March but, more importantly, Fortnite is fun again. The tone in the game's subreddit has shifted from the gloom of Chapter 6 Season 4 to optimism: some are praising this as one of Fortnite's best-ever seasons, others are hoping Epic might extend it.

And it's not nostalgia for The Simpsons. That certainly helped—it's one of the few TV shows that spans generations—but more important are the balanced loot pool with plenty of powerful weapons, a fully themed map overflowing with easter eggs, cartoonish overblown mechanics (a revolver than attaches a floaty balloon to players being the standout), lots of movement items and a smaller map, helping trim the mid-round lull you often get in Battle Royale.

It's a huge contrast to the recent Star Wars mini-season, which dropped a few themed locations on a big, existing map and whose signature weapons—lightsabers—were underwhelming.

As I write this, Epic hasn't hinted at The Simpsons remaining past November although I can see them popping up in Blitz, the game's five-minute mode, whose star has dwindled after its electric start. Instead, the new Chapter 7 is set to replace The Simpsons on November 29, with leaks pointing to a West-Coast theme of Hollywood films and Las Vegas casinos.

So what can Epic learn from The Simpsons' success, both for the upcoming chapter and for future mini-seasons?

Cribbing from Springfield

It's crucial that the map needs to match the theme.

The end of Chapter 6 Season 4 was a jumble of military outposts, Japanese villas and Star Wars bases lingering like a wookie's bad smell. The Simpsons map was fully on brand. You could jump on the family sofa to re-enact the show's opening credits and listen to Bart's prank calls at phone booths. Even Spider-Pig's dirty hoof prints were in the right place.

These details aren't frivolous—they're essential for creating a sense of place, for making you feel like the designers care about the little things. It makes you want to spend time in it. Chapter 7 seems well-placed for a committed follow-up: if Epic leans into a movie theme you can imagine a different film for each POI, with famous scenes recreated and inside jokes retold, and an overarching Hollywood glamor tying it all together.

If Epic can nail the map theme, then it also needs to stop funnelling players into specific points of interest. When Chapter 6 Season 4 launched, if you wanted to win it was almost mandatory to land on two specific locations with bosses who dropped powerful medallions. When those bosses vanished, the focus was boosting your "O.X.R. rank", and if you didn't land in the right spot you'd lag behind. There were some locations I barely saw.

In The Simpsons, the mini-bosses who drop mythic and exotic weapons spawn randomly each round. So do the donut storms that rain down high-tier weapons. Every POI becomes viable, encouraging you to explore the map and choose your drop spots not because of their proximity to bosses, but on their own merits. Early on I found a beach in the corner of the map that was unexpectedly littered with chests, and it became my favorite drop spot for the season.

This mini-season has also proved that smaller maps work. For The Simpsons, Epic shrunk the play area and cut the lobby to 80 people, rather than the regular 100. That size, combined with plenty of movement abilities, made it easy to zip around and find other players if you wanted a fight. Epic sped up the storms too, making matches faster and more urgent.

As somebody whose natural play style is slow and cautious, it pains me to suggest faster rounds. Tension is a key part of Battle Royale and speed can erode that. But I felt the balance they struck in The Simpsons was about right. Epic will have also seen players complaining that the Chapter 6 map felt too big, leading to boring periods in the middle of matches. Leaks suggest Epic may vary the shape of the storm so it's not just a conventional circle, and I wouldn't be surprised if they tweaked the timings too.

Of course, nailing the map's size and theme means nothing without the right items, and The Simpsons has shown we need more over-the-top weapons and mobility items.

Krusty's exotic Mr Blasty, which attached a balloon to whatever you hit with the first bullet of a magazine, was the most fun I've had in Fortnite in ages. If I didn't find that, I could pick up the reworked infantry rifle, a fully automatic headshot machine. We got a slingshot that spat radioactive clouds to drive enemies from hiding spots, and a ray gun that turned targets into electrified cartoon skeletons.

Shockwaves should, I believe, always be the core of Fortnite's movement, but The Simpsons also gave us fish that granted teleportation and an anti-gravity drink. The more mobility in Fortnite, the better—and it all worked perfectly with a smaller map, giving you the freedom to roam wherever you wanted. Playing it safe with weapons and mobility for Chapter 7 would be a mistake.

For the first time in a while it feels like the community is fully behind Epic. No pressure, then.

I haven't watched Stranger Things since its first season, but I seemingly cannot escape from the constant reminder that its final hurrah is airing later this year. Part of that is my fault for refusing to cough up for ad-free Netflix, but I now also have Epic Games to add to the list of culprits: it's turning Fortnite's Blitz Royale mode into a hellscape not dissimilar to the Upside Down later this month along with a huge Stranger Things shop drop.

Will, Lucas, Mike, and Dustin are arriving as skins—I can't tell if it's a classic Fortnite limb-stretch-to-fit-model-proportions situation or if the kids really do just look like that now, I howl from my rocking chair—as well as creepy skinsuit Vecna. Fortnite is promising a full suite of back blings, pickaxes, emotes, and LEGO minifigure versions to go alongside them. As much as it's not my bag, I certainly wouldn't mind a few cheeky D&D references worming their way in as a result.

As for Blitz Royale, there's not too much info on that front just yet. If it's anything like the Iron Man theme we got a couple months back, we'll be getting a full-fledged mini Stranger Things-themed map complete with relevant items. This might also be our chance to see the return of the Upside Down portals which made an appearance six years ago when the first collaboration dropped during Season 9, introducing The Demorgon, Eleven, and Jim Hopper as skins.

As someone who isn't particularly infatuated with the Hellfire Club, this one is a pretty firm miss for me. But hey, I've already been eating pretty good this year in the battle royale thanks to collaborations with Hatsune Miku, Gorillaz, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and The Simpsons. For me, I'll be adding this one onto the list of "cool for other people, but not for me" as I did with all the superhero stuff earlier this year and the Star Wars mini season.

The Stranger Things Fortnite Blitz Royale map will kick off on November 21, with the Stranger Things skins dropping in the shop later tonight. The stuff from Season 9 will also no doubt be making a comeback—it all last made an appearance at the end of August, so it's ripe for another showing.

First, some personal information. My name's Josh. I am 32 years old. I spent several years of my life working towards National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) accreditation that covered media law, responsible reporting, how to sensitively approach victims of trauma, and plenty else that had me up late into the night, hitting the books. I speak Russian to a reasonable level of fluency and have recently been learning Mandarin.

I am here to tell you that underwear Homer's leaked nipples may be the first in Fortnite (via GameSpot).

In what history books will describe as 'the nips seen around the world,' a leaker named Dr Cacahuette posted a "First look at New (Giant) Homer Skin" to X yesterday. The figure, unmistakably Homer, is large, and wearing only a pair of tight white briefs, above which loom a speck of belly button and—there, just visible above the orb of his stomach: two dark, mamillary dots.

Imagine me tremulously removing a pair of glasses like Walter Cronkite telling you JFK just died.

Dr Cacahuette, unmesmerised by the nipples of Homer Simpson, stayed relentlessly on task to also point out that, when he arrives in Fortnite, nearly-nude Homer will also come with "Lego style, back bling, [and] pickaxe."

Which is all well and good, but let's take a second to think about the epochal leap Homer's nipples represent. Up to this point, Epic has been markedly mastophobic in Fortnite. Even its shirtless character skins have been free of the nipple: completely smooth of chest and bearing nary a hint of areola. This omission has tyrannised the Fortnite community since the game's 2017 release.

Interesting, then, that Homer Simpson should be the one to finally free the nipple. Does this mark a new, more liberal era for Fortnite character design? I implore you not to get your hopes up. The fact of the matter is that Homer's low-detail design is inherently nipple-friendly. His papillae can be rendered in the form of two unobtrusive black dots that won't leap out, disquietingly, against the rest of his character design.

I suspect that only when Epic's character artists find a way to render more realistic nipples more unassumingly will other, more highly detailed characters start to also bear their whole chests.

Years ago, Fortnite added pets as backpack bling you could carry around. Having a personal handbag dog wasn't quite the same thing as having an actual mobile pet who can run and chase and so on, but Fortnite's finally getting those with the addition of Sidekicks.

As Epic's introductory spiel says, "Sidekicks are new pals in Fortnite that join your adventures in Battle Royale, LEGO® Fortnite, developer-made experiences, and more. Enjoy their company as they react to the world around you!"

It then immediately leaps into an explanation of the customizable appearance options for your new Sidekick, and makes sure to warn that, "Your choices are permanent, so make sure to preview the Appearance before locking it in." So yeah, if you change the color of your pet dino-lizard or banana dog, they'll be stuck that way forever.

You can, however, give them a different vest whenever you want, as outfit cosmetics aren't locked-in. And if you do change your mind about their appearance, you can give Epic some more of your money to buy another forever friend, as a Player Support answer explains. "Yes, you can purchase a Sidekick multiple times and give them different Appearances. However, each Sidekick customization you own in your Locker must be unique. Duplicate Appearances are not allowed."

This decision has gone over about as well as you'd expect on the Fortnite subreddit. "What, are we doing Roblox monetization now?" asks the top discussion post, which has pulled in a couple hundred comments today.

The first Sidekick coming to Fortnite is Peels, who you can unlock as part of the Battle Pass starting on November 1. Additional Sidekicks, including Bonesy, Spike, and Lil' Raptor, will arrive in the shop on November 7, and if you already own the Bonesy Back Bling you'll get Bonesy as a Sidekick for free. Though they don't have any effect on gameplay, having a Sidekick equipped will earn Sidekick Points, which you can spend unlocking even more cosmetics.

Fortnite's long-teased Simpsons crossover will officially begin on Saturday, Epic has confirmed.

A new trailer points to an 11am ET in-game event—the servers will then go down for several hours before the Simpsons mini-season starts around 5pm ET.

In the trailer the drooling aliens Kang and Kodos—who have also flown next to the Fortnite Battle Bus in recent days—hover over a wasteland blasting their lasers before beaming two players skywards.

Expect to see something similar during the in-game event: we know thanks to leaks that the Simpsons collab will have its own standalone map, which means leaving Oninoshima, Chapter 6's island.

Bart's treehouse will likely star in the event too. It appeared in the top-left corner of the map near Creepy Camps a few days ago, sprouting from a sapling, and yesterday a glowing countdown timer appeared for Saturday's event. You can vault into the treehouse to find a crackling TV that flashes pictures from the show.

Epic has kept schtum about what will happen during its Simpsons collab, but the leaked map shows iconic Simpsons locations such as the Nuclear Power Plant and Springfield Town Hall. The map appears to be a little smaller than normal Battle Royale maps—whether Epic will shrink the player count below 100 remains to be seen.

Leaked key art teases the loot pool: the classic assault rifle, aka the SCAR, is there alongside the Thunder shotgun from Chapter 4. You'll also have to dodge donuts that rain from the sky and damage any player they touch.

If usually reliable leakers are to be believed, the Simpsons mini-season will last a month before Chapter 7 starts on a brand new island.

Alongside catchphrases, jokes, and plenty of new Battle Pass skins I hope Epic uses this mini-season to experiment and to nerf some neglected weapons, especially the SMGs—I've got a whole wishlist full of what I want to see.

Fortnite's Chapter 6 final flourish appears to be a Simpsons mini season with an entirely standalone Springfield-themed map, and it's coming this weekend.

Leaks hint at what's coming: the key art shows new skins and at least two of the weapons—the classic assault rifle, aka the SCAR, and the Thunder shotgun—while the full leaked map shows iconic Simpsons locations.

But we still don't know exactly how it'll play. So after a relatively underwhelming Chapter 6 Season 4, here are a few things I'd love to see Epic try before we reach Chapter 7.

A floating skateboard, and plenty of other mobility

This season started with limited mobility—now, between shockwaves, the witch's broom, Crash Pads and the Last Call knife we've got loads, and that variety feels fantastic. I hope Epic keeps it up.

Alongside shockwave grenades—the best mobility in the game—I hope Bart's skateboard plays a big role. It's in the leaked key art, which is a good start, but it'll need to be more than just a simple roll-along-the-ground transport. Why not play into the Simpson's famous opening credits, where Bart flies through the school's front doors and hurtles through the air before landing? A floatier skateboard that plays like the Surf Cube from Chapter 6 Season 3 would be very fun indeed.

A juicy SMG buff

SMGs have been in a weird spot for ages and rarely place high in the Fortnite weapons tier list. They're outclassed by rifles at range and shotguns up close: the Stinger SMG was perhaps my least-used weapon this season and, despite multiple buffs, the Veiled Precision SMG isn't worth picking over any of the assault rifles.

I think Epic needs to rethink what SMGs are for. They should, in my opinion, be a viable alternative to the shotguns that still dominate the game up close. Give them a damage boost that falls off a cliff at mid-range, or make players move faster while holding them. It'd disrupt the meta but if there's ever a time to experiment, it's during a short mini season, and whatever Epic learns from it could help inform Chapter 7.

Mythics and exotics that reward aggression

Epic has done the hokey-cokey with mythics and exotics this season: they've been in, out, and then in again. At first, they were hidden in two O.X.R. bunkers that were locked until you'd killed enough players to reach a certain rank. Now, there's only one bunker on the map but it's open to all.

For me, the earlier approach was better because it rewarded aggression, encouraging everyone to go for kills, while still keeping exotics accessible to everyone: opening those bunkers was noisy, attracting other players to set up an ambush. I imagine we won't be seeing bunkers on the Simpsons map but gating the wackiest exotic weapons behind challenges, or adding both risk and reward to obtaining them, would be welcome.

Keep the map stable so we can master our favorite drop spots

I usually enjoy Epic's mid-season map shake-ups, but I've struggled to cope with some of Season 4's changes. Tweaks to medallions, bosses, O.X.R. bases, capture flags and bunkers have made it difficult to stick to a consistent drop spot. This is especially tricky if you don't play everyday: I squad up with two friends who only play occasionally, and they're baffled every time their favorite location is transformed.

If the mini season is six weeks long, I'd love for the map to remain relatively stable. Reward players who master certain POIs, learning the best landing spots and NPC locations. Stability also makes any changes or new locations feel more impactful when they arrive.

More regular comms with the community, please!

After a year's absence, the Fortnite team's Reddit account sputtered into life in September with a post explaining a new patch. As I wrote at the time, the weapon changes themselves were, in some ways, confusing but fans appreciated the transparency. As one said: "Please continue this and never stop."

When the inevitable big rebalance happens a week into the Simpsons season, let's hear the reasoning! This isn't about holding Epic to account, or about the community being owed an explanation, but it helps everyone better understand the tweaks and makes players feel more included in those decisions.

Remember that it's Battle Royale

The leaked map looks smaller than regular Battle Royale maps. I don't mind that in principle, but I would like Epic to stick to a slightly slower pace if possible. BR should always be the place for more thoughtful firefights and strategy: after all, we have both Reload and Blitz for more frantic rounds. So let's not speed up the storms too much.

A proper sniper rifle

We've been starved for long-range options this season: the Falcon Eye sniper is one of the worst we've seen in Fortnite and the DMR, while decent, was removed from the loot pool a while back.

So why not bring back one of the big beasts, like the hunter bolt-action or the suppressed sniper rifle? A proper long-range option opens up an entirely new playstyle for people who don't enjoy shotguns, and while the map looks smaller than normal there appears to be enough open spaces to suit long-range battles.

Plenty of Simpsons goofiness

Ultimately these mini-seasons are a chance to go a little wild. We've already heard that donuts will rain from the sky, and the Simpsons is such a rich text to pull weird ideas from. How about a working Moe's bar that you can visit for a temporary buff? A makeup gun? Or an item that lets you slide backwards into a bush on demand, a la Homer? Go all out, Epic.

It was bound to end this way, but even so, this one hurts. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, the first and only battle royale I've ever been much good at (and thus the only one I ever really loved), is going away for good in April 2026.

"During these past 4 years, we have been thrilled to see your passion and dedication to Bloodhunt," developer Sharkmob wrote in the closure announcement. "Your feedback, creativity, and enthusiasm for our game has meant the world to us. However, despite you, our amazing community, the current player population has reached a level where keeping the servers running is no longer sustainable. This has led us to make the difficult decision to take Bloodhunt offline.

"The sun is now going to rise over Prague. We will be taking down the Bloodhunt servers on the 28th of April 2026, after which the game will no longer be available."

This outcome became inevitable more than two years ago, when Sharkmob decided to stop working on Bloodhunt, also a consequence of insufficient players. The studio said at the time that game servers would be kept online "for as long as we have an active player base and community," and it retooled some aspects of the game to help keep coming back. But the reality is that once you've crossed that line, it's game over, and player counts have been slowly sagging ever since, typically bracketing the 500 concurrents range: Enough to keep it playable, but not really viable.

So, here we are today, at the end of the line. Which sucks, because Bloodhunt is a really good battle royale, and a legit Vampire game to boot: It doesn't have the depth of an RPG like Bloodlines, naturally, but it nails the ambience of a gothic city at night whose shadows hide scheming legions of ancient power.

My biggest complaint about Bloodhunt is that the demands of a battle royale kept me from exploring the city at my own pace: I think a no red gas option (red gas being Bloodhunt's taken on the ever-closing battle royale ring of death), allowing players to fight but not forcing them into it, would've been a lot of fun as an optional game mode.

Anyway, no matter now, because the red gas is closing in on all of us and we've got six months left to enjoy Bloodhunt's unlife: It's set to go down for good on April 28, 2026.

It's no secret that Battlefield 6 will be getting a battle royale mode: Of course it will, obviously, but also EA has already explicitly said it will. What it hasn't said is when that mode will go live, but now it has--and it's coming tomorrow, October 28, the same day as the launch of Battlefield 6 season 1.

Specifically, according to today's surprise post on X, Redsec will arrive at 8 am PT/11 am ET/4 pm UK.

The announcement follows numerous leaks of the battle royale mode's rollout date, as well as its title, Battlefield: Redsec. Notable as well is that the battle royale mode, like it's Call of Duty counterpart Warzone, is free to play.

No further details, like how the free-to-play battle royale mode will intersect with the definitely not-free-to-play Battlefield 6, have been revealed at this point, and the teaser on X—four soldiers, seemingly of different classes, walking away from a downed airliner in a burning residential neighborhood, doesn't tell us much either.

That suggests to me that this is EA scrambling in a rapid reaction to the leaks, but it doesn't really matter because there won't be much of a wait—all will be revealed tomorrow.

As a man in his twilight years (32), there are some things I've had to make peace with. I don't understand Roblox, I don't know why '6 7' is funny, all of my personal habits and peccadilloes have been roasted to cinders by teenagers on TikTok, and I don't have the dexterity or frontier spirit to get into Fortnite.

It's fine. It's fine. I'm just waiting for the good Lord to take me. One thing I do understand, though, is The Simpsons, which I was the right age to catch (at least as re-runs) back when it was still good. So even I raised an eyebrow, perhaps two, when leaks began swirling that the entire town of Springfield would be back in map form in Fortnite (via VGC).

That's per Fortnite Nostradamus/Deepthroat/leaks-person-of-note NotPalo, who wrote that Fortnite would be getting a cel-shaded map with separate sections for areas like the Springfield nuclear power plant. There'll also be Simpsons character skins (with, it's said, their own Lego versions for use in Lego maps), and a Simpsons-themed mini-season.

Which is all very lovely, but let's cut to the chase. One of the perhaps five things I know about Fortnite is that when they added Peter Griffin to the game, they had to make him absolutely jacked to play nice with the game's regular hitboxes. This was hilarious, and I have no issue with it. But the question arises: will portly Homer also wreak havoc on Fortnite's hitboxes? Will we have to confront the dread specter of ripped Homer in order to make him actually work in Tim Epic's Big Murder Box?

These are the questions that trouble me, but I guess we'll have to wait to find out. NotPalo doesn't suggest when the collab will manifest, so you'll just have to wait. In the meantime, what's your favourite joke from when The Simpsons was still good? Mine's "Oh, a gym."

I've been typing for most of my life—flogging flax so I could afford a dragon longsword in RuneScape, roleplaying in World of Warcraft, and at present, writing multiple articles a day for the good site PC Gamer. I average about 130 words per minute, which isn't competitive or anything, but I'm pretty nippy compared to the average pecker (it's a typing term, stop giggling).

I've long believed I would never be able to translate these skills to gaming. I mean, sure, you've got games like Typing of the Dead, but I don't do anything if it doesn't have bragging rights. I'm told that's 'mean-spirited' and 'narcissistic' and 'unhealthily competitive', but those people were all losers anyway.

Final Sentence, a battle royale typing game, shows me there's a potential royale out there which could fix this hole in my life, but it's not this one, at least not yet.

When it comes to the good, there are a lot of interesting ideas going on here. The game takes place in a nightmarish Orwellian warehouse filled with rows of typewriters and masked overseers with guns.

Your job is to type faster than everyone else in the lobby. Make a mistake, and you get a strike. Make three strikes, and you get to play Russian roulette—adding a bullet each time your vigilant overseer gives their revolver a spin.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the format that sap the potential from the whole thing. Lobbies are mostly filled with bots, which I won't resent Final Sentence for, given it's a small-scale indie battle royale and those are generally hard to get bodies for.

However, the moment someone hits first place, everybody else dies—which renders the fact you've got an overall timer kinda pointless. Anyone who's a touch-typist like yours truly is going to be done well before anybody's personal timer runs down.

Thirdly, if you do make mistakes, it's hard to catch up. Each 'round', usually consisting of a few sentences, has a mandatory wait timer in between bouts of click-claking. This, I assume, is to give your tired little fingies a break—but it also means the winner will have their lead maintained artificially. The Russian roulette animation is also slow as hell, and while I get that it's part of the punishment, it puts you so far behind that you might as well alt+F4 and go next if you bump into it.

There's also the matter of the text itself. It's super early-days, but from what I've played, you can count the amount of unique scripts you're tasked to write on two hands. While I did have a chuckle writing out "the cow says moo" or "can I haz cheezeburger" or, in one instance, an incredibly horny script that made me filthy typing it (still won, though), I probably shouldn't be seeing repeats in my first half-hour. Some of them have typos, too, which is just mean.

I think Final Sentence would be better served by a round-by-round elimination system, Fall Guys style, where the slowest few typists are eliminated—and everyone else is given a reset. Even when someone was matching my WPM, it rarely felt competitive, because they'd forgotten to put a hyphen in the right place one too many times and had to watch discount V slowly spin a revolver at them, giving me an insurmountable—and kinda boring—lead.

Still, it's early days, and developer Button Mash has every chance of turning it into something better. You can give Final Sentence a try yourself right now on Steam.

The sheer scale of Fortnite and the money involved has meant Epic Games has to deal with a sizable contingent of ne'er-do-wells. Amusingly enough, in some cases it has pursued a strategy of crushing the cheaters in court and then making them apologise, like some sort of giant corporate stepmother. But when things start to get into the realm of cheating the system itself, and illicitly siphoning off money from the creator program, it turns out Epic's lawyers play a whole other ballgame.

Fortnite has for many years hosted user-created experiences called islands, provides a suite of tools to make their creation as easy as possible, and then pays out money to the creators of the most popular maps. There are various metrics to determine payouts: session length, player count, and whether players go on to buy anything. This isn't chump change either: Epic says it pays out millions of dollars every year to community creators.

So two miscreants took a look at that situation, and came up with a plan. Build some experiences, juice the player numbers through the roof with bots, and then sit back and profit. That's what Epic alleges in a new filing in Michigan against Idris Nahdi and Ayob Nasser (first spotted by Polygon), who it says created over 20,000 bots to 'play' their own creations between December 2024 and February 2025. Epic says the maps created by the pair did have real players, but it believes between 88% and 99% of the engagement in these maps was faked.

"Defendants programmed the bot accounts to engage with Defendants’ own Fortnite Islands by using a cloud gaming service that allows users to play video games, like Fortnite, remotely," reads the filing. "Defendants worked together to create multiple Islands in an attempt to disguise their scheme by spreading the fake engagement across multiple developer accounts and Islands."

Epic says the pair made tens of thousands of dollars through the practice but, once Epic noticed something funky and stopped payments, the bots all suddenly disappeared. Epic at this point told the pair to stop playing Fortnite and "destroy all copies" of the game in their possession: which they didn't, and is one of the reasons things have reached this stage.

The lawyers now say Epic wants to recuperate the money paid out for the alleged con, and wants to protect the integrity of the creator program. "Developers trust that the time spent creating Islands will be rewarded in accordance with the Engagement Program Payout Terms, and based on how real players engage with the Islands. Defendants’ conduct undermines Epic’s relationship with developers, however, depriving legitimate developers of the full share of funds they otherwise would have received and eroding the trust Epic has built with them."

Epic further asks that the court bar both players from creating Epic accounts in future, and stops them from downloading or playing Fortnite. It even asks that these measures apply to the defendants' "heirs [and] successors." That feels incredibly unlikely, though it is somewhat funny to think about some poor kid who can't play Fortnite with his mates because daddy ran a botting ring and got caught.

Last week, Fortnite pulled the Peaceful Hips emote—which recreated a portion of the opening dance in James Gunn's DC show Peacemaker—after the latest episode's bombshell completely changed the context around the movement.

After Epic said it would "inquire into our partner's creative intentions in this collab emote," it's now determined that Warner Bros. most definitely was not trying to stitch the developer up. But, you know, it's changing the emote anyway. Just to be safe.

Warning: spoilers for Peacemaker Season 2 Episode 6 ahead!

The Peaceful Hips emote was added to the Fortnite store earlier in September, before being promptly removed just a few days after Peacemaker's sixth episode of its second season aired. The reason? Well, the episode revealed a pretty major plot twist: John Cena's character has been milling around in a seemingly-perfect alternate universe… which turned out to be an America that lost to Germany in World War 2. An all-white America, a swastika in place of the American flag's stars. A Nazi utopia, essentially.

The revelation gave some rather damning new context to the goofy dance number Peacemaker performs in the show's opening—at one point, he's seen flapping his arms in a way that could be perceived as resembling a swastika. More importantly, the move seems to be an exact replica of one performed by Donald Duck in the anti-Nazi propaganda short film Der Fuehrer's Face from 1942.

That also happens to be the exact snippet used for the Peaceful Hips emote. You see the problem here.

Now, in a follow-up post, the Fortnite Status X account wrote: "We've worked closely with our partners at Warner Bros. Games to confirm there were no creative intentions to connect the Peaceful Hips emote and the current Peacemaker storyline. To avoid any confusion, we're modifying the Emote choreography in next week's update." Epic says that players who purchased the emote prior to its removal are free to return it without spending any refund tickets.

Presumably the updated emote will take a slightly less damning portion of the dance, while still being from the second season's choreography.

Ultimately it's probably the best move for Epic, even though the response as to whether it's a necessary move is mixed. Removing the implication entirely is likely to save the developer a massive headache—and even if that wasn't the emote's intention, it was most certainly going to be exploited in that manner. Will that go away even after an alteration? Who knows

I'm nothing if not a total sucker. Pandering? Totally works on me, as evidenced by Fortnite's newest collaboration with K-Pop Demon Hunters. Which is perhaps the most excited I've been for silly videogame skins since Epic let me gun people down as Hatsune Miku.

In case you're not Saja Boys-pilled, here's a quick rundown on K-Pop Demon Hunters: Rumi, Zoey, and Mira are part of girl group Huntr/x—and also happen to be demon hunters, hence the name—with the movie following their story against demon boy band, the Saja Boys and protecting folk through strengthening the anti-demon barrier known as the Honmoon.

It all sounds rather daft when I try and put it down on paper, but K-Pop Demon Hunters is wonderfully witty, both cribbing from and poking fun at K-Pop and K-dramas. It's a refreshing original story wrapped up in the excellent animation work seen in some of Sony's other recent ventures like the Spiderverse films. And, as someone who grew up deeply entrenched in second-generation K-Pop back in the late 2000s, the Saja Boys give me all the same fuzzy feelings that BigBang did back then.

K-Pop Demon Hunters went straight to Netflix back in June and, well, has become a bit of a smash hit. It beat out the first season of Squid Game to become the most-watched thing on the streaming site, and its songs even managed to surpass real-life groups like BTS and Blackpink on the US Spotify charts, according to the BBC.

It was only a matter of time, then, until Fortnite was going to get its hands on Huntr/x. It looks like the collab will bring three skins—Rumi, Mira, and Zoey of course—as well as a ramyeon-munching emote from the beginning of the movie, and a ramyeon back bling to boot. It also looks like the Void Mask item is getting a cute reskin with Jinu's tiger, Derpy, and potentially a Typhoon Blade reskin to resemble Rumi's demon hunting sword.

Along with the cosmetics comes the return of the limited-time mode Horde Rush, now called Demon Rush. It's basically an endless horde mode akin to Call of Duty's Zombies, with waves of demons ripe for elimination. This run included perks inspired by the movie, too, with Demon Rush being available from now until November 1.

A lot of these big collaborations usually see multiple phases, so part of me is hoping that we'll be getting the Saja Boys at some point down the line. I'm not saying I desperately need to hit the Soda Pop dance on a downed Vegeta, but I certainly wouldn't say no to the idea.

Epic has pulled the Peaceful Hips emote from Fortnite—created as part of a collaboration with James Gunn's DC show Peacemaker—after the latest episode's bombshell painted the dance in a pretty damning new light.

Warning: spoilers ahead for the latest episode of Peacemaker!

The emote comes from the second season's opening dance sequence, where John Cena's character stiffly flails his arms before following up with a cheeky little hip thrust. With no context it could be excused as a silly goofy routine, but Peacemaker's latest episode came with a huge revelation that all but confirms the meaning behind the move.

It turns out the seemingly perfect alternate dimension Peacemaker has been hanging around in is actually one where America lost to Hitler in World War 2. Essentially, he's accidentally found himself in Nazi utopia, exclusively populated by white people and where the American flag's stars have been exchanged for a swastika.

Going back and peeping at the Peaceful Hips emote, it suddenly starts looking a little more… Third Reich-y. And, as pointed out by Forbes, there are some striking similarities between the dance Peacemaker does and one performed by Donald Duck in the 1942 anti-Nazi propaganda short film Der Fuehrer's Face.

It's presumably for all of those reasons that the emote is now gone, possibly to never return. A post on the Fortnite Status X account reads: "We're disabling the Peaceful Hips Emote in Fortnite as we inquire into our partner's creative intentions in this collab emote. Assuming it's not coming back, we'll issue refunds in the next few days. Sorry folks."

Now I'm not here to point any fingers, but I have to wonder if someone is having Epic on here. The emote was agreed upon and created before the episode aired, sure, but presumably after the script had already been written and such a huge plot twist decided. I would have thought at least one person at Warner Bros. would've given a heads up, but what do I know?

James Gunn hasn't said anything about the situation yet, with his last X post occurring right before the emote was disabled. Whether he'll comment is yet to be seen—he did promote the collaboration earlier this month, calling Peaceful Hips a "peace-spreading, hip-swaying emote" with a little winky face at the end. Rather mischievous behaviour, if you ask me.

Maybe I'm just a big old baby, but nothing sounds more nightmarish to me than dropping into a Fortnite lobby full of teenagers and being forced to engage with them via proximity chat. Epic seemed to think it was a good idea, though, launching its Delulu mode over the weekend.

And hell, Epic was right: over 126,000 concurrent players flocked to it during its weekend stint, according to IGN, making it one of the most popular game modes on offer during that time. I suppose a lot of that's down to the hunger for something new—Blitz Royale found similar success when it first landed a couple weeks ago—though, for some, the reasons for playing are perhaps more sinister.

That's because the entire basis of Delulu is dropping in solo and making use of proximity voice chat to team up with other players—and then potentially betraying them. Sounds kind of fun in practice but hey, this is the internet we're talking about. What's an open voice chat without having a slur or two hurled your way, eh?

It seems as though a small percentage of players have taken Delulu's novel idea and weaponised it for some pretty toxic behaviour, with Epic revealing that "thousands [were] banned already" during the weekend. A separate post from the Fortnite Status X account also said the developer was "moving faster and stricter to catch troublemakers."

It's unsurprising, though taking a look at the Fortnite subreddit reveals a pretty healthy mixture of posts ranging from players who found Delulu a total game changer, to those who seemed to have a whole host of bad encounters with some bad eggs. "This is one of the most toxic modes Fortnite could've ever added," one commenter wrote, while another said Delulu is "terrible if you're a woman that speaks, I've gotten harassed both times I tried it".

But others have had a whale of a time, with one poster saying "I really hope they keep having Delulu weekends, genuinely some of the most fun I've had with Fortnite in YEARS," and a Reddit post saying that "the interactions, the small storylines and the overall humour" has cemented Delulu was "the greatest thing since [Epic] even added BR to Fortnite."

If you missed Delulu, there'll be one more chance to dive in this weekend between September 26 and September 29. Hopefully Epic doing cleanup on a whole bunch of voice chat-related reports will mean the second run is a little more genial. I do wonder if we'll get any more Delulu weekends after this one, or if the extra pile of reports is simply more work than Epic wants to deal with.

Epic Games upended Fortnite's Battle Royale meta this season when, without warning, they brought back two fan-favorite assault rifles and a powerful shotgun from previous seasons.

Fans were stumped: none of them fit the season's bug-infested theme. One of the rifles instantly became—in my opinion—the best weapon in the game, with the other close behind.

"They really just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks huh?" said one user on the game's official subreddit. Another said the "random loot pool", including these new weapons and the recently added Shockwave hammer, felt like a "feeble attempt to keep the season fresh".

Many claimed the dwindling player counts in Battle Royale and Zero Build, typically Fortnite's two biggest modes, were the trigger. This time last year Battle Royale averaged 300,000 players—it's now less than half of that.

So what's going on? How concerned should loyal players be, and is Epic's reaction too scattergun, as some fans suggest?

There are lots of reasons for the player count dip, not all of them linked to the mode itself.

First, Fortnite's overall numbers always fluctuate. Average player counts have hovered around 1 million for the past few months, which is lower than normal but in line with drops in the summers of 2023 and 2024.

Second, Fortnite has more modes than ever before. Blitz Royale's five-minute rounds have been popular since they arrived in June—Steal the Brainrot, a Roblox import, has peaked at over 500,000 players. A lower overall player base split between more game modes means fewer people in Battle Royale.

Anecdotally, this fracturing of the player base has driven some fans away altogether, including a group I used to play with. If you're logging on today for the first time since 2024 then you're confronted by a confusing menu full of unfamiliar gamemodes, some with amateur artwork. It's enough to convince some people that Fortnite has changed too much.

But Epic's decisions in Battle Royale itself have undisputedly played a part too.

Many players hated the two overpowered movement medallions added for Chapter 6 Season 4. Fighting anyone carrying them was painful and holding one felt essential for winning, so everyone funnelled towards the same two map locations to grab them. Epic removed the medallions entirely two weeks later but I imagine that, for some players, the damage was done.

Frenzy auto is back from r/FortNiteBR

Others say that Battle Royale is now too intimidating for new players. I feel it too: lobbies are sweatier, opponents are sharper. It's a combination of hardcore players moving from Ranked modes to regular Battle Royale (Ranked has lost disproportionately more players), the proliferation of streamers and content creators sharing tips with viewers, and simply the game getting older, which means long-time players are even more experienced relative to newbies.

And then there's the fact this season's map and bug theme haven't grabbed people. The O.X.R. military faction feels generic, and the new level-up system encourages you to land at certain bug-infested locations, making some parts of the map redundant. I can't remember the last time I landed at the Star Wars-themed First Order Base in the upper-right of the map.

I agree, to some extent, with players calling the new weapons a "bizarre experiment". I thought I'd misread the news when I first saw it on X, and knew it'd instantly transform how I played.

The two assault rifles feel particularly jarring: they're the only ones in the loot pool with scopes or sights, making them easier to aim. I now almost never use the O.X.R. rifle, which was specially designed for this season, because the Holo Twister is simply better.

The constantly changing loot pool—in the same update, Fortnite removed an automatic shotgun and the DMR rifle—is particularly disruptive for infrequent players, who return not knowing where familiar weapons have gone.

But I ultimately don't think it matters whether the loot pool is "random". Whether it's in keeping with the season or not is, to me, irrelevant: is it fun? The Holo Twister is one of my all-time favorite rifles, and I love that I can now use it every round. And ultimately, these weapons are what fans were requesting: in a rare Reddit post explaining the patch, Epic said the community had been asking for assault rifles with scopes and powerful shotguns.

It's too early to say whether the changes have worked, but player numbers over this past weekend were the healthiest since August. I'm sure Epic isn't worried either way: don't forget, Fortnite's all-time player peak wasn't five years ago but 9 months ago. Battle Royale is, and will remain, massive. And as I said earlier, some seasons just don't click, so the devs may as well do what they can to win as many fans back as possible.

Epic's recent Reddit post is a change of communication strategy, and shows it is willing to listen and engage with players. The community is pleased: the most upvoted comment told Epic to "please continue this and never stop".

But the real test is on November 1, when Fortnite's new season is scheduled to start. One quiet season is a blip; two in a row would be concerning.

In 2025, the last thing I'd expect to be surprised by is the reveal of a new battle royale game. But Arkheron, the first game from Bonfire Studios, is working a magic all its own on a genre the zeitgeist has left behind. During a preview event for press, studio founder and former Blizzard chief creative officer Rob Pardo said it was inspired by three concepts: Diablo dungeons and progression, PUBG PvP, and Dark Souls combat.

I wouldn't blame you for being skeptical, but the result looks more promising than it sounds.

Arkheron is set in a "dark, surreal world," where teams of amnesiac souls battle in a purgatorial afterlife to ascend an ever-shifting tower built from the memories of the dead. Teams enter the tower, gain abilities from memory-haunted weapons and equipment, and compete to climb higher before the current floor is destroyed until one team eventually stands triumphant at the tower's apex.

At first glance, Arkheron's isometric perspective and hellish environs loudly ring a Diablo-esque bell. But as soon as it starts moving, it's clear that it's doing its own thing: Rather than moving and positioning with mouse clicks, Arkheron uses what Bonfire calls "isometric free-aim combat"—an ARPG camera angle where the mouse or analog stick controls horizontal camera movement and intuitive combat targeting.

It's a control scheme and presentation without many comparisons. It's like something between a third person and topdown shooter, but with the melee weapons, bows, and spell-slinging implements of a dark fantasy setting and abilities with skillshot potential that would feel right at home in MOBA teamfights. And the camera's pulled in close to the character to limit peripheral vision, which Pardo said puts melee and ranged combatants "on equal footing."

Seeing Arkheron in action was one of those moments where something makes so much sense that I'm not sure how it isn't already an industry staple. The perspective and control scheme seems to lend itself to fast, flashy, and expressive fights that prioritize positioning situational awareness, but without the fiddly precision demanded by traditional shooter or mouse cursor controls.

In Arkheron, Pardo said, "what you carry defines you." Throughout a match, players will cobble together builds based on the abilities granted by the equipment they collect. A pair of weapon slots define your combat style: An enchanted two-handed axe grants a leaping attack for jumping over walls that other items might create, while a heavy mace launches a wave of slowing ice energy.

Two remaining slots go to amulets and crowns, which provide utility abilities. One amulet erects an electric energy barrier that blocks enemy projectiles but lets your team shoot through it, while a radiant crown might make you briefly invulnerable before exploding to steal life from nearby enemies when the effect expires.

While there's plenty of space for players to find their favorite synergies between relics, each piece of equipment is also part of an item set that offers a bonus if you equip two items from the same set. A set of fire-themed relics, for example, grants shorter ability cooldowns.

Having four item slots means players have the potential to mix and match up to two set bonuses. But if you find all four pieces of a set, you can instead embody the memories associated with the set and transform into an Eternal—themed hero characters who've remembered who they used to be.

Pardo hopes tying all the game's equipment to Eternal sets will provide two benefits: It lets Bonfire change up the meta by rotating out Eternals, and it gives the studio a chance to flesh out its fiction by exploring the Eternals' histories.

The words "battle royale" might not move the needle much in 2025, but it looks like Arkheron could be carving out its own space by twisting and blending genre conventions. If you're eager to see how it's shaping up, Arkheron is running its first Alpha playtest this weekend, which will be active daily from 11 am PDT to 11 pm PDT between Friday, September 19 and Sunday, September 21. Just head to Arkheron's Steam page to sign up.

Fortnite's fastest mode, Blitz Royale, has been reskinned as an Iron Man mode for the weekend, with a new map and themed items for every player.

The circular Stark Island has three locations based on Fortnite's Chapter 2 Iron Man collaboration—Stark Industries, Stark Cabin, and Stark Academy—and it has fully replaced the regular Blitz Royale map. The regular map should return early next week.

Every player starts each round with a pair of Iron Man items: one for flying and one for shooting. You'll either get the War Machine's Arsenal—which rains down missiles—paired with the War Machine's Hover Jets, or the Stark Industries energy rifle with the iconic Iron Man flight kit.

I jumped in and couldn't find any golden chests, which is where you'd usually find Blitz's boon power-ups. But you'll still be rewarded with exotic weapons as you level up, and you'll still get supply drops containing powerful medallions.

Blitz Royale, which launched in June, is Fortnite's most frantic mode. Rounds last five minutes, exotic weapons are everywhere, and medallions grant purposefully overpowered skills, such as invisibility while sprinting.

Player numbers have waned since Blitz Royale launched, and daily peaks in September have been roughly half what they were in July. Updates have been a little inconsistent, too: Epic recently promised a "Players' Choice" week, where the community picks the loot, but it never materialized.

The launch of the Iron Man map has, however, pushed the concurrent player count for the mode above 100,000 for the first time since September 1, and it usually peaks on weekends so I'd expect it to climb further.

Blitz Royale isn't the only Fortnite mode with a big update: the main Battle Royale and Zero Build modes reshuffled their loot pool overnight, removing the Twinfire Auto shotgun and the DMR, and adding four weapons: the Frenzy Auto shotgun, the MK-Seven assault rifle, the Holo Twister rifle, and the Spire rifle.

It has surprised fans because it's basically an overhaul of the entire arsenal for this season: the Holo Twister and the Spire instantly become the two most powerful rifles in Battle Royale. One user on the Fortnite subreddit accused Epic of simply "throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks", a sentiment echoed by others.

While it's certainly jarring, the Holo Twister and the Spire are two of my all-time favorite Fortnite guns, so I'm looking forward to jumping in over the weekend.

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 across all modes, 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.

Different franchises colliding in videogames has been a thing since some guy at Banpresto realised they could make Godzilla and a Gundam kick a football around an 8-bit pitch in 1992's Battle Soccer.

Sticking a familiar face in a sea of original characters is a solid marketing strategy, and something that I've been especially privy to as a lifelong fighting game player: Yoda in Soulcalibur, Negan in Tekken, a freakin' Halo Spartan in Dead or Alive. I am deep in the trenches of Kingdom Hearts' Disney fever dream.

But it was a novelty, a special occasion. Then Fortnite happened. It started simple enough: a Marshmello here, a Guardians of the Galaxy there. The game is now home to countless different TV shows, videogames, and musicians under one roof. It is perhaps the only place you can gun down Ariana Grande as Vegeta while getting third partied by Master Chief.

A Reddit post from two years ago noted over 400 collaboration skins in the game, and there's been a whole lot more since then. Hell, this year alone has already seen over 70 new collabs from King of the Hill to Squid Game.

Like I said, this kinda thing works, and there's a reason Fortnite has leaned into it so heavily—I mean, my entire reason for getting into the battle royale was because they added Hatsune Miku—but it's starting to spread like a deadly multiverse virus. Beavis and Butthead? Stick 'em in Call of Duty. Screw it, put Nicki Minaj in there while you're at it. Why not Tomb Raider in World of Tanks? Slipknot will fit into Smite pretty well, I reckon.

Despite the tactic very much working on me this year, 2025 is also when I've started to truly tire of the Fortnitification of everything. I think it finally dawned on me during Summer Game Fest in June when, as I watched the trailer for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, I was once again flashbanged by Hatsune Miku. The magic had worn off. A virtual Japanese idol was not going to reel me in a second time, you heathens. Don't even get me started on goddamn Minecraft Steve.

It's a crossover

After all, one of the most exciting parts about any videogame is getting to meet a new cast of characters and learn all about them. I am an absolute sucker for silly bits of lore and recurring original characters even when they don't have entire stories built around them.

Even my favourite PC rhythm game DJMAX has really started to lean into telling narratives through multiple music videos—like virgin Power Rangers and their relationship-sabotaging ways, or a girl's quest for resurrection (a cheeky nod at reviving the franchise) leading to splitting the original mascot into two brand-new ones.

That stuff all kinda gets lost when a character's reason for existing in a videogame is a licensing fee and some clever marketing. Like, why is Joker driving around in a kart in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds? How did Dante end up in the world of Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne? Just because some guy at Atlus thought he was cool? Come on, man.

If you're gonna Fortnite the shit outta your game, I at least want a reason. One that, you know, doesn't totally fuck with the original game's canon timeline. Even just a "Whoops I somehow ended up in a strange land, how did that happen!" will suffice. Please. I beg of you.

Just, you know, don't do what Fortnite did with its Star Wars Palpatine event back in 2019—where The Rise of Skywalker actually ended up vaguely referencing the battle royale with a broadcast that ended up suggesting a connection between the two and thus creating confusion for those not well versed in the ways of Risky Reels. That's a little too far for my liking.

My problem is it's starting to feel like a lazy way to bulk out a character roster or a skin shop and an all-too easy way to rake in some money. There's only so many times I can see Leon Kennedy or Geralt outside of their retirement homes before I lose my goddamn mind.

I get it, the industry is in a shaky spot right now and safe bets like these draw in the money, but I don't need every single videogame to be a crossover episode. If there's a strong cast of characters and strong storytelling to take me on a journey alongside them, I don't need an obligatory Superman or Kratos as a bargaining chip to make me play.

Fortnite's new bug-infested season, Shock 'n Awesome, is landing today. Creepy crawlies are spreading their purple goop all over the Battle Royale map, and you'll be fighting both them and other players if you want your victory crown.

We're getting new weapons (and some returning favorites), a new faction, fresh points of interest, and new boons, which boost your stats when you grab them. There's even a Halo collaboration, too.

Chapter 6 Season 4 has a lot going on, so stick with this page for live coverage as we discover it all.

Welcome to live coverage of the new Fortnite season

Morning everyone! I'm armed with a big flask of coffee and a good night of sleep, and for the next several hours I'll be diving into Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 4 Shock 'N Awesome, which launches today.

Servers are still down right now but they should be back before long. When they are, I’ll play as much as I can and post about it here—expect images of the new locations, video of the new weapons, and snap judgments about the season as a whole.

I'm excited by what I've seen so far. Epic has gone heavy on the PvE, which should help fill mid-round lulls, and I like that there are so many ways to get better loot: chests, hive sacs in bug nests, supply drops as you rank up, squashing mini-boss Queen bugs, and ransacking O.X.R. bunkers (O.X.R. is the big new faction this season).

The big question for me is, how good will the new O.X.R. Assault Rifle feel? Like most Fortnite players I lean heavily on my rifle and I'm wondering if it'll supplant the reliable Hammer AR, which is unvaulted for this season, as my go-to.

Come back throughout the day for regular updates.

Watch the Chapter 6 Season 4 trailer

The season's trailer came out yesterday, giving us our first look at the new weapons in action. You can see the new assault rifle—and the battle pass Halo skin—at 0:40, the new three-headed minigun at 0:50, and the orbital airstrike at 1:10 (we don't know exactly how that will work yet).

Some of what you'll see above won't arrive until later in the season: the Power Rangers blaster and the Megazord who slays the Queen bug at the end of the trailer aren't here at launch.

5 biggest changes this season

If you haven't been following the build-up for the new season, then here are the five biggest changes you need to know about.

Bugs have infested the map: You'll find hives, nests and egg sacs dotted around, as well as three Queen bugs. Defeat them for a mythic weapon and a medallion.

Rank up for better weapons: Just like in the previous season, Super, there's a rank system and you level up by killing bugs and other players. You start at O.X.R rank C, and every time you level up you'll get a Drop Pod of loot, as well as a boon that grants new abilities. At rank A you can enter bunkers to get exotic weapons.

Boons: Each round you'll earn boons that make you more powerful. One improves aiming down sights, one lets you sprint for longer, one increases magazine size for all weapons, one reveals future storm circles, and then one—the Super Soldier boon—is an all-rounder that improves as you rank up, eventually granting unlimited stamina, faster sprint, and reduced recoil.

New weapons: A new season means a new loot pool. We're getting a minigun, a shotgun, an assault rifle (I'm intrigued to see if it has some kind of first-person scope or not), a powerful revolver, and a laser-guided rocket launcher.

Four new points of interest on the map: Shown in the image below. The Hive is insect central, O.X.R HQ has lots of NPCs and an armory where you can buy weapons, and Ranger's Run has plenty of bugs and high-tier loot.

The full loot pool: Sentinel Pump stays, Bass Boost gloves go, Hammer AR returns

Here's every weapon and item you can get at launch this season, via Osirion on X.

I'm glad the Sentinel Pump—forever my favourite shotgun—is staying. In the battle of the assault rifles, it's the new O.X.R. Rifle against the fast-firing Fury AR and the Hammer AR, which has been unvaulted. The Hammer is always a strong pick, so I imagine I'll be carrying that or the new one, depending on how that feels.

And the FlowBerry Fizz is back, too. It's the fun, floaty healing item that turns down gravity temporarily, and we're also getting an exotic version that gives you the Slap effect (infinite stamina).

Proximity chat in Battle Royale?

The servers are still down, but data-miners are hard at work uncovering gems. This morning, the X accounts Loolo_WRLD and @Wensoing posted that proximity chat will arrive in Battle Royale soon, based on files they've seen.

Epic hasn't confirmed this, and we don't have any more information for the moment—when exactly it will arrive or how it will work. I imagine that if it were added, it would be off by default. I don't think I could take someone taunting me with a 'Be Humble' emote AND insulting my skills out loud after they've gunned me down.

When will Fortnite servers be back online?

I don't know, but it shouldn't be long.

They went down at 2am ET/7am BST, so four hours ago as I write this. They are usually back online within five hours for new seasons, but rarely they've taken longer.

As soon as they're live I'll bring you everything I can from the new season.

New OG season: Desert biome, a Viking village and Shockwave Grenades

It's not just the main Battle Royale mode that's getting an update: OG mode, which revisits Fortnite's past, enters Chapter 1 Season 5 today.

The map is transforming, spawning a desert biome and rifts all over, as well as three new POIs: the town of Paradise Palms (pictured above), the Lazy Links golf course, and a Viking Village near Greasy Grove. Here's a full picture of the new map, via the official Fortnite X account.

But as always, it's the old loot that the community is most nostalgic for. We're getting five items added at launch: the compact SMG, the heavy sniper rifle (a one-shot headshot), the double barrel shotgun, the Rift-To-Go, and the Shockwave Grenade, which is arguably Fortnite's best mobility item.

Later in the season, Epic will add the suppressed assault rifle, the Grappler, and the Port-A-Fortress.

And if you want to play OG in Expert mode—no bots, no skill-based matchmaking—you can do that in duos for build mode, or solo for Zero Build. While you're at it, read Morgan's Gripes Week piece on games that try to sneak bots into multiplayer matches. Well, this is awkward...

We're light on mobility this season

The previous season, Super, was rammed full of mobility items: we had the Bass Boost gloves, Shockwave Grenades, dash sprites, the Surf Cube, Myst Form, and a grappler. Most of them are cut for the start of Season 4, which might make both pressuring enemies and escaping fights more difficult.

Shockwave Grenades are staying and, I'd suggest, should be your go-to item. I'll be hunting them down as soon as the servers go live.

The other main combat mobility for this season is the Crash Pad Jr, which bounces you a short distance. It's less versatile than the Shockwave Grenades, but it'll get you out of a sticky spot.

The only other mobility item is the launch pad, which fully sends you skywards and deploys your glider. It's more for getting around the map than for combat.

The wild cards are the new boons and medallions, which you get from killing mini-boss Queen bugs. Two of the medallions—the Surge medallion and the Springleg medallion—will boost your movement, and levelling your Super Soldier Ranked boons via the O.X.R. ranks will eventually give you unlimited sprint. They could all be crucial when it comes to the final circle.

And it confirms to me that the Flowberry Fizz, which helps you jump higher, is going to be the meta healing item (and it combos brilliantly with the Crash Pad).

5 hours of downtime

A bit of a milestone: a note on Epic's website from early this morning had suggested server maintenance would last until around 12:00BST/07:00ET, and we're past that point now.

This is longer than most outages we've had this chapter, but it's hardly unprecedented. We've had eight-hour waits before—let's hope we don’t get that far.

A detailed breakdown of all the Battle Royale map changes

Kudos to X account Guille_GAG, who has made a brilliant thread of how the map is changing.

It shows just how much Epic is transforming the map for this season: alongside the bug infestation and new major POIs we've got plenty of new landmarks. If Buggy Slurpwaters has—as its name suggests—lots of healing slurp barrels, it could be a go-to landing spot (on that note, I'll be updating my best landing spots guide over the next week as soon as I've got to grips with the new season).

I like how most of the changes, including the Hive, which is ground zero for the new critters, are right at the centre of the map rather than on the periphery, which guarantees that they'll be crucial for most rounds.

A closer look at the new weapons—and what I hope they do

Yesterday's trailer showed us some of the new weapons in action. Let's look at three, starting with the Swarmstrike rocket launcher (above). From what we know so far, it appears that it won't be in the season at launch, but don't hold me to that. You guide it with a laser and it shoots a hail of seven relatively slow-moving rockets.

I imagine it's most effective at clearing bugs and destroying buildings, although I hope it isn't too powerful against builds (we've had plenty of items that needed nerfing because they could destroy any structure in one go).

Next, the O.X.R assault rifle.

Will it have a scope? Many players were annoyed that the previous season, Super, didn't have a rifle with sights to aim down—all the guns were third-person firing, which was disappointing after how strong the Holo Twister was in Chapter 6 Season 1.

The new rifle looks like it has a very small red-dot sight in the picture above, but we only see it firing in third person. I would, personally, love first-person aiming, although I imagine it'd make this a must-carry weapon, which could feel samey.

Finally, the Bug Blaster, which fires explosive plasma projectiles, or you can charge it for a more powerful attack.

Charging items almost never become meta because of their slow fire rate, so I'd love for the heavy attack to properly blow people away.

And it's live!

Servers are back online—here we go!

Stay on this page for regular updates, including clips of the new weapons in action, details on the new locations and how they work, and quick takes on how the season is shaping up.

First look at the Hive area

After a few "matchmaking errors" I got into my first game and dropped near the Hive, which is where the bug infestation is spreading from.

It was as busy as you'd expect. A pop-up message told me the "threat level" was high, and I was promptly wiped out by a player with a shotgun. I like the environment, though: it's colourful, there's lots of variation in height, and it looked like there were water jets to send you skywards if you needed to escape.

You can also see the big letter 'C' on the right hand side. That's the O.X.R. ranking, which you'll boost by killing bugs and enemies.

We go again!

The Swarmer bugs are weak—and potentially so is the new shotgun

The bugs you can see in the clip are the Swarmers: the most common type. They pop out of the nearby hive (the purple glowing mound), and they seem to have 36HP.

What I think happens is that, when players have collectively dealt enough damage to bugs at a single location (I'm at Ranger's Run), then the Queen will spawn, as you see at the end of the video.

I'm using the new Sweeper shotgun in the clip above. First impressions are that it'll be great against bugs, but not so good against players because it has a wide horizontal weapon spread. That means that you're likely to miss lots of pellets even if you have a player in the middle of your crosshairs.

But let's see: this is just a snap judgment, and maybe it deals lots of damage at higher rarities.

The full map, with lots of new icons

This is what the full map will look like when you start the new season.

You'll need to get your head around the new icons: the Queen colonies are the mini-bosses, and they're in the same place every game. If you defeat them you'll get a mythic weapon and a medallion.

There are two O.X.R. Armories each round. From what I've seen, one is always at the O.X.R. HQ, while the other moves around (here, it's at Canyon Crossing).

Infested outposts appear to move each round: go there to defeat bugs and find higher-tier loot.

Finally, you can see that two locations—Canyon Crossing and Supernova Academy—have gold names. I'm not quite sure what that signifies, but perhaps it's where you find the O.X.R. Bunkers, which you can unlock once you reach rank A and get exotic weapons? Hopefully I'll find out soon.

Too. Much. Stuff.

Okay, there is a lot to get to grips with in this new season: I've played three rounds and already my head is spinning.

It feels like there are six things drawing my attention in any moment, each one promising higher-tier loot.

And that's a good thing! It feels like Epic has tried to eliminate those mid-game lulls by giving you more to do than you can possibly manage.

Let's start with an infested outpost, which I cleared in my last match.

The idea is that you're protecting an NPC outpost—from what I can gather, there are set points on the map where this event can happen.

When 20 bugs die, four drop pods fall from the sky, each stuffed with solid loot and boons to buff your stats. (And by the way I was wrong earlier when I said the weakest critters, the Swarmers, have 36HP—it's just that they die in one shot).

I'm currently solo right now and I feel like clearing one outpost would set me up for an entire match: I got multiple purple weapons from this outpost, including the new rocket launcher.

And that launcher isn't laser guided and doesn't appear to launch multiple projectiles as it did in the trailer—just take a look at the clip below.

New assault rifle feels strong without being overpowering

Assault rifles are the backbone of Battle Royale, and I was curious how the new one—the O.X.R. AR—would feel. Would it have a first-person scope? Would it be as good as the Spire Rifle?

The answer is no to both.

You can only aim this in third-person, like the Spire rifle.

But it's not quite as strong as last season's AR. It's in same mold—a relatively slow-firing, low recoil, accurate assault rifle—but it deals a touch less damage than the Spire, and has a much smaller magazine, at 21 bullets.

In the clip above, you can see that it deals 29 damage with a body shot, and 51 with a headshot. That's at range, with a green-rarity weapon.

I still think it will still be a versatile mid-range weapon, but I'm not sure it'll emerge as the stand-out gun of the season, especially because the alternative is the the strong Hammer AR.

Here are the full stats of the base weapon.

Capture the flag

Two capture points will spawn per round of Battle Royale, which isn't something I'd expected before the season launched.

They're marked by red flags on the map, and all you need to do is stay in the vicinity of the flagpole as it slowly rises.

Once it gets to the top, it'll drop loot and you'll gain a chunk of O.X.R. rank—I get enough here to rank up, which also earns me a drop pod (my screen is purple because I'm standing in the storm).

It's yet another way of getting high-end loot. As I said below, it feels like this season is bursting with things to do, and ways to rank up, but perhaps that's just because everything is new and fresh.

I stand corrected: the rocket launcher is definitely laser-guided

I just had my first properly long match, getting down the final two before getting blasted by a mythic Sweeper shotgun (although I still maintain the Sentinel Pump is a better option).

I've realised a few things: first, I was wrong about the rocket launcher not being laser-guided. It is, and it does fire multiple rockets at once, if you aim with your right-click first. If you hip fire, you have no laser.

In 1v1 firefights it's not going to be much use—I got into a long-distance fight with an enemy and we both gave up and pulled out our rifles after a couple of flurries—but it's really powerful against vehicles and I can see it working brilliantly in team-based build mode where you need to chew through layers of wood at once.

The new revolver is sneaky good

Another thing I've realised: the Wrecker revolver might end up being my favorite weapon this season. It's essentially a shotgun that fires fast, has a big magazine, and deals up to 100 damage per shot.

I got three kills with it in my last round—against, gasp, real players, not bots!—and it just feels great to use. I chased down an enemy and, at medium range, with not particularly good aim, landed two quick shots for 60 each to finish them off.

When you right click to aim in the bullet spread is absurdly small: you get a sense of it at the end of the clip below. See how tight the crosshair becomes?

As an add-on: watch the mini-map and you'll notice that when my opponent picks up two medallions, their location is marked precisely on the map, which feels like a way of stopping one person becoming too powerful in any given match.

Did I cut the video just before I got ambushed and whiffed all my shots? I couldn't possibly say.

O.X.R. HQ is gigantic, with lots of weapons to buy

A final thought before I drop into another round: the O.X.R. HQ feels like it could become one of my regular spots.

There are half a dozen NPCs there who you can pay to fully patch you up, and, more importantly, there's a giant armory that sells almost anything you'd want to buy—a gold Sentinel Pump, a Shockwave Launcher, high-level assault rifles, FlowBerry Fizz, and more—and it all costs either 600 or 800 gold.

I've landed here twice and both times I've had it to myself, which felt eerie. I imagine that when people build up their gold reserves, this could become a hot drop location.

Slaying the Queen is actually really hectic

Queen bugs spawn at three fixed spots on the map each round. I decided to drop straight on the one at Demon's Debris (the old Demon's Domain), and it's a surprisingly tough fight solo. Not because the Queen herself hits hard, but because it's a bit of a mosh pit of bugs and other players.

I finished her with the new minigun, which you can see above. So far I've enjoyed using it against the bugs, but not against players: it takes time to spin up, and I find it less versatile than the assault rifles, although I imagine it'll be viable in build modes, particularly in team-based build modes with one player carrying it.

Once you defeat the Queen at Demon's Debris she drops a medallion—very fun to use, I'll talk about it in the next post—and a mythic version of the O.X.R. assault rifle. I said earlier the gun felt strong, but not too strong, and having handled the mythic version, that still feels right. It's accurate and the damage is good, especially at higher rarities. But its small magazine holds it back, especially because the reload isn't rapid.

Double-jump medallion plus Flowberry Fizz equals pure joy

Now onto that Springleg medallion, which you get for defeating the Demon's Debris Queen (see the last post). It gives you a double jump as long as you have stamina, and makes you immune to fall damage.

It's a joy to use—when you combine it with the anti-gravity of the Flowberry Fizz you float, weightless, for miles in the air. Even though I mess up my sprint jump, I still land exactly where I wanted.

It's less useful when you don't sprint jump, as you can see at the end of the clip.

I haven't tried the other medallions, but this is the one I was most excited for and given there is less mobility this season, I can see it becoming part of the meta.

The other two medallions are the Surge medallion (at the Hive), which increases your movement speed and gives a burst when sliding, and the Carapace medallion (at Ranger's Ruin), which nets you 50 shield per kill, and passively regenerates 3 shield per second, up to a maximum of 50.

No, really, this revolver is actually amazing

I'll be wrapping up this live page shortly with a bunch of closing thoughts, but before I do that: can I reiterate what I said earlier, that this new revolver—basically a shotgun—is legit.

You'll see in the clip that it consistently does about 60 damage at medium range when scoped in, which is more than any other shotgun. It fires fast, and has a decent-size magazine.

Yes, I whiff one of my shots—in my defence, I thought the player was a bot, and it caught me off guard when they weren't—but then kill them with a 70-damage hipfire headshot.

I've always been a Sentinel Pump fan, but this is tempting as a finishing weapon, when you've already chipped away at an enemy with an assault rifle. I'll be updating my Fortnite best weapon guide as soon as I can, and right now I still don't have a clear sense of what's top-tier, but I think this revolver might be up there.

The field for best assault rifle is wide open

In most Fortnite seasons, one assault rifle emerges as clearly the best, and basically becomes everyone's primary weapon.

Having played for the best part of five hours with the new season, I think it might be different this time.

The O.X.R. rifle is strong at longer ranges, but limited by its smaller magazine. The Hammer is a good all-rounder but falls off beyond mid-range, while the Fury shreds up close but is less versatile.

It might ultimately come down to two things: first, what range do you like to play at? And second, what rarity weapon can you find? I think the mythic O.X.R. rifle might end up trumping the others, but I need to play more before I fully decide.

Closing thoughts: an overwhelming start to the season

Alas, my flask of coffee is long gone, and it's time for me to sign off, but here are some quickfire closing thoughts on the start of Chapter 6 Season 4.

1. There is an overwhelming amount to do. Bite it off in chunks. It'll take me a good week or more to feel comfortable in this new, busier map.

2. Visiting bug-infested spots isn't essential, but it's where all the good loot is. Throw yourself into Queen fights and outpost battles, and get to know how they both work.

3. Mobility is at a premium: stock up on Shockwave Grenades whenever you can. I have a feeling the double-jump medallion is going to be one of the game's best items.

4. For builds, experiment with the weapon pool: there are no hugely standout weapons for 1v1 firefights, but I think the minigun and the rocket launcher—both easy to find—will be essential in build fights, particularly if you're playing in teams.

5. Always, always, shower yourself in Flowberry Fizz.

I'll bring you more Fortnite coverage of the season on the site soon, including a weapons tier list and a guide to the best drop spots.

Take care and thanks for reading!

A very brief day one recap

US EIC Tyler Wilde popping in here from a time zone in which it's still daylight for a very brief check-in on how players are getting on with the season so far. The word on the subreddit and social media sites is:

• This season rules
• This season sucks
• Everyone's too sweaty at the start of the new season

The biggest topic of conversation may be the revolver-shotgun Sam discusses a few posts down. The consensus so far appears to be that it is definitely OP, but so much fun it'd be a shame to nerf it.

Ya'll ever see a videogame skin so bad you're forced to immediately go to sleep? My eyes rolled all the way back in my head perusing the day one store offerings of Off The Grid, an NFT-powered battle royale that launched yesterday on Steam after a stint in early access on the Epic Games Store.

For the low price of 74 GUN (Off The Grid's premium currency that's also a crypto token, yuck) you can grab the "PC gamer set," characterized by a heavy-set dude with a neckbeard, bad skin, and a keyboard and mouse strapped to his chest.

Completing the look is a "Can it run Crysis?" sticker slapped on the tac vest, evoking the ancient internet meme of 2007.

"More precise than WASD on Cherry Blues and icier than water-cooled GPUs, Overlocker's been training his whole life for this chance to prove that aim beats hours," reads the skin's description. Sick.

Going for a lot more dough on the Off The Grid marketplace are the "Blue" and "Red" sets, which feature Trump and Kamala masks (as spotted by Kotaku). Trump's vest has a "Stop Woke" sticker, while Kamala's has a "Legalize It" weed sticker. Cool.

These were presumably released during the game's early access period last year, though the Trump skin in particular is going for 3,600 GUN on the player-driven marketplace (nearly $200 if you were to buy currency directly from the game client). That's nearly five times the price of the Kamala skin.

Then there's this Ninja set, which I mention only because it's a surprisingly realistic rendition of a Twitch streamer I haven't thought about in years.

Developer Gunzilla Games seems to have avoided Steam's ban on NFT and crypto games by not featuring crypto market hooks directly in the client. We're still figuring out how Off The Grid's traditional live service model intersects with its out-of-game crypto marketplace.

Even if I didn't know Off The Grid was an NFT thing, its dumpster edgelord humor (the work of Chappie director Neil Blomkamp's involvement) would be the first nail in the coffin. In my first 30 minutes playing with randoms, the in-game announcer called us "regurgitated cum bubbles," compared discounted store prices to "cum stains on a whore's panties," and warned us that our "safe space is shrinking," referring to the battle royale circle getting smaller.

Off The Grid launched to a meager player count and mixed reviews, with players citing bad performance, "crypto BS," and decent shooting.

Fortnite’s frantic Blitz Royale has been the game’s most popular attraction since it launched as a time-limited mode two weeks ago—and now Epic is hinting that it might become permanent.

Blitz Royale drops 32 players into a miniature Fortnite map and turbocharges the match with special powers: invisibility while sprinting, infinite ammo, faster reloads, and more. Its five-minute rounds have consistently pulled more players than any other mode, and fans have been asking for an extension beyond the scheduled end date of July 15.

Epic has now responded to those calls. “We've seen a lot of ‘make Blitz permanent’,” the official Fortnite X account posted on Thursday evening, “but what should we change?”

It attached a poll with four options: new points of interest (POIs), more collab items, new powers, or “more Megalo Don plz”, a reference to a medallion that grants faster movement, infinite stamina, and faster reloading.

I’m sure most players would pick option five, all of the above, if they could.

New points of interest leads the voting, which makes a lot of sense: the Blitz Royale map only has five POIs so any swaps could change the feel of the whole mode. It already uses locations from Fortnite’s past including Retail Row and Pleasant Park, so there’s plenty of nostalgic potential.

The absurd powers in Blitz Royale—which are granted by boons and medallions—are what set the mode apart, so the more the better, and a couple of the weaker ones wouldn’t be missed. Alas, that option is currently in a distant dead-last place, so doesn't seem likely to happen.

As for collabs, Blitz Royale’s weekly themes swap every Tuesday. The first theme was Avatar: the Last Airbender, and everyone started each round with an elemental attack. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrive for a week on July 8. I’ve enjoyed how much the weekly themes transform matches: the elemental attacks of Avatar were more than a gimmick, and you could genuinely win without picking up another weapon.

Whatever players ultimately cool, it'll hardly be a surprise if Blitz Royale sticks around. As I wrote last week, the mode's popularity demands permanency, and its short rounds are ideal if you can’t spare the 25 minutes needed for a 100-player match. If you die in Blitz Royale you’re put into another game instantly, which has encouraged me to push outside of my comfort zone (cowering in a bush is not an option here).

On Fortnite’s developer-supported subreddit, fans are suggesting other changes. “GET RID OF THE GIANT ASS POP UP THAT COVERS YOUR ENTIRE SCREEN,” one top comment says, a reference to the text describing your starting medallion and the boons you collect as you level up. A trios mode, currently absent, is another popular demand. You’d need 33 players to make it work but I can’t imagine that would upset the balance.

Of course, one tweet isn’t a guarantee that Blitz Royale will be made permanent, but teasing it and then dropping it would be a curious move, so I'm hopeful.

If you’ve never played Blitz Royale, then read everything you need to know about Fortnite's hottest mode.

Blitz Royale is Fortnite's fastest game mode, dropping 32 players into a small map packed with mythic weapons and pop culture crossovers.

It has a new map, faster rounds and mythic weapons that transform how you play—basically, there’s lots to learn. In this guide I’ll explain the fundamentals, including the Blitz Royale event schedule and get your started on your journey to a victory royale.

About Blitz Royale

What is Blitz Royale in Fortnite?

Blitz Royale is a no-building, 32-player battle royale on a mini Fortnite map. The play zone shrinks quickly, and rounds last roughly five to six minutes. You can play Blitz solo, in a duo, or in a squad of four.

Blitz Royale is defined by its speed, the abundance of top-tier weapons, and by its themed crossovers, such as with Stranger Things. It used to have medallions and boons that granted you special powers but Epic has removed them for now. They may return later.

Players begin each round with the same items, usually a bubble shield plus at least one weapon. This often changes day-to-day, but they're usually related to a time-limited Blitz theme, which is currently Stranger Things.

As you kill enemies or survive storm circles you improve your Blitz Level and at each level up you’re granted a high-level weapon (legendary, mythic, or exotic) weapon or item.

Blitz Royale schedule, Stranger Things event, and permanent mode

Blitz Royale was initially due to end on July 15, but it now looks like it’ll be a permanent mode: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has all-but-confirmed it by reposting an X post by a Fortnite leaker, and other leakers say Epic has updated some seasonal quests for the mode to end in 2027.

The theme rotates regularly and changes the loot. Right now the theme is Stranger Things, and the map has completely changed into a half-normal, half-corrupted place called Hawkins, with four locations taken from the TV show, all littered with Easter Eggs.

Blitz Royale map and items

Blitz Royale map

The map changes often but right now it's called Hawkins, and it's all themed around Stranger Things.

There are four POIs: Library Landing, Hawkins Heights, Stranger Suburbs, and Gnarly Farms. These last two are in what's known as the Upside Down, and they're scary, corrupted locations covered in Mind Flayer tentacles (the Mind Flayer, a nightmarish creature from Stranger Things, is sometimes visible on the horizon).

Hawkins Heights is a dense residential area and has the Scoops Ahoy ice cream parlor from Stranger Things, Library Landing has one main building with some houses around it, Gnarly Farms is a sparse, rural POI with a few farm buildings, and Stranger Suburbs is, as the name suggests, a suburban residential area.

Blitz Royale weapons and items: starting gear, mythics, and llamas

There are too many weapons in Blitz Royale for me to go over every single one, but it’s important to at least understand how gear works in this mode, and how to get the best guns.

Everyone starts with the same loadout: right now you'll get bubble shields plus a weapon, which is either the Oni shotgun, the Spire rifle, or the exotic Shadow Tracker pistol, which pings players on your screen and tracks when after you hit them. You'll also get a third starting item: either peppermint sweets, which make you run faster, or thermal taffy, which gives you thermal vision, ideal for the map's darker areas.

There are multiple ways to get better items. The first, and most obvious, is from chests: alongside regular wooden chests you’ll find some rare (blue) chests and larger golden chests.

You can also get top-level gear from supply drops (three per round) or from llamas, either gold or silver, so keep your eye on your map for their locations. Their loot changes week-by-week.

Finally, you obtain either a weapon or item every time you gain a Blitz Level. This is often how you get the most powerful weapons in the game: every weapon you get this way is either legendary, exotic, or mythic. Basically, the best weapons in Fortnite.

Weapons from chests, drops, and levelling up are randomized, and the loot pool is massive, so the best way to learn your favourite weapons is to play, and play aggressively. I’d advise carrying a mid-range weapon like a rifle and a close-combat option, ideally a shotgun.

Right now, my favourite weapons are the Spire rifle for long-range fights and the Wrecker revolver up close, but most of the mythics and exotic weapons are worth carrying, so try them all out.

Blitz Royale rewards

You can earn three rewards from playing Blitz Royale. You get the Blitz Knight outfit if you earn 10 account levels or place in the top 10 players in 20 matches, the Blitz ‘Brella glider by winning three times, and the Blitz Wings back bling by winning five matches or earning five account levels.

Also, when you win a match you'll see victory wings appear behind you (these are not the same as the back bling). The more matches you win, the more elaborate those victory wings become.

Blitz Royale, like other modes, also has daily quests you can complete for XP.

Blitz Royale tips and strategy

Here are seven quick tips for getting better at Blitz Royale.

Learn a few drop spots

Your immediate priority should be opening golden chests. As you explore the map, learn a handful of locations that are dense with chests, and then consistently drop there. Explore the area to find other chests. Once you’ve done this a few times, you’ll have a couple of consistent 'rollout' options that reliably get you boons and powerful weapons within the first minute.

All-out aggression

Blitz Royale rewards aggression: the faster you kill enemies, the faster you’ll level up, and the faster you’ll get the best weapons. Because matches are so short, and restarts so fast, you can afford to get out of your comfort zone, which will help you improve your mechanics.

Don’t sleep on shield bubbles

You start each match with them, and they can save your life. Hold onto them, and know how to switch to them quickly and throw them down if you’re ambushed. There are plenty of online guides for improving at shield bubble fights: here’s a good, recent one.

Prioritise supply drops

Grabbing the high-tier loot inside supply drops can make you the most deadly player on the server, so check your map and head for them. Take care: other players will have the same idea, so peek at them from cover before you run into the open..

Mobility and two weapons is still a killer combo

In my Fortnite battle royale weapons and loadout guide I recommend carrying at least two weapons and a mobility item, and I think that same advice applies here. You need something for mid-range fights, and something for close quarters.

Mobility items are rarer, but will help you escape a sticky situation, or help you third-party other players as they fight each other.

Play cover

Some Blitz players like to sprint directly at their enemies and take them on in an even 1v1 duel, relying on their mythic weapon to pull them through. But remember the fundamentals of Fortnite: if you play around cover you’ll always have the upper hand. Look for rocks, trees, buildings, even the lips of hills. Fortnite’s third-person view is over your right shoulder, so favour the right side of whatever cover you’re using.

I am an invisible sprinting rifleman with unlimited stamina and ammo. If I switch to my SMG it will teleport me, blink-style, whenever I double jump. And if an enemy somehow shoots me they're pinged in red, visible through walls, as my shields automatically regenerate to patch the damage.

I am a Fortnite god.

I still find a way to lose, of course.

As it often does, the pressure of reaching the final two players makes me grip my mouse tighter. I whiff every shot as we carousel around a bandstand in Pleasant Park, and our awkward dance only ends when my opponent blasts me cleanly with their Exotic shotgun.

Thankfully, in Fortnite’s newest mode, Blitz Royale, redemption is never far away. Five minutes later, armed with different superpowers and down to the final three, I ambush a dueling pair with my own Exotic shotgun, which boosts my speed as I land damage, and get my win.

Bitesize battle

As I write this, more people are playing Blitz Royale than anything else in Fortnite. Its five-minute rounds are dopamine machines designed with phones in mind but, judging by the community reaction, it's hooked players on every platform. And while it is technically temporary, confirmed to last until at least mid-August, I'd be shocked if Epic discarded it. Its popularity demands permanency.

What I fear is that it will draw people away from the main battle royale modes, draining them of the player bases they need and fragmenting an already siloed community into even smaller packs.

But what I hope is that Blitz Royale's instant gratification draws new players, or encourages old ones to return, and ushers them towards other game modes.

Blitz Royale drops 32 players into a small map. Everyone has the same randomly selected medallion from a pool of 12, each with a powerful ability: one gives unlimited stamina and turns you invisible when you sprint, another improves damage on ranged weapons. Everyone also starts with an identical powerful weapon, currently an Avatar: The Last Airbender elemental attack.

Chests are everywhere, 'boons' that grant new abilities are plentiful, and you can swipe extra medallions from supply drops. The effects stack and if you can survive three minutes you'll feel supercharged. You don't choose which boons or medallions you find, but most synergise: a boon that boosts your speed if you mantle cover, for example, pairs perfectly with one that reloads your weapons during parkour.

Aggression is mandatory, both because you cannot hope to hide on a map this small and because killing levels you up, handing you top-tier weapons including Mythics and Exotics. If you're not firing at an enemy then you're falling behind the loot curve, and you'll suffer in the late game.

Knowing you can't stand still focuses your mind. It feels exhilarating to swing from one fight to the next: as one enemy falls, you're already sprinting to another you saw in your peripheral vision on a nearby hill, with a plan to kill them and grab a nearby supply drop after. It is relentless and demanding, and if rounds were longer it'd be exhausting.

It is also an ideal combat training ground. Rounds are so short, and the next begins so seamlessly, that deaths barely matter, so I push beyond my comfort zone and take fights I usually wouldn't. I can already feel my aim improving, my nerve steadying in 1v1s.

It cuts out what you might harshly call the boring bits of Battle Royale, the mid-game lull when you're hunting for fights to improve your loadout, or looting quiet locations. And it shortens the wait between the most exciting moments: a handful of players armed with the powerful gear and confidence they've accumulated across the match, smushed into a violent, final mosh pit. In regular Battle Royale you can feel that rush every 25 minutes. Here it's virtually instant, and it's hard to resist the pull of just one more round.

But as much as I'm enjoying it, it will never be my favourite mode. Tension matters: 100-player is a slow drumroll building to chaos, and the rewards feel bigger because of it. Trimming the 'boring' bits erodes the lulls that make those high points feel so good. And when you can win several games in a single sitting, as you can in Blitz Royale, each victory crown feels less special.

That’s not me claiming regular Battle Royale is better than Blitz Royale—it is purely personal preference. But I know I’m not alone in preferring a slower burn.

If Blitz Royale lingers long-term, and I hope it does, it will never struggle for players. It guarantees action and adrenaline, and I will keep diving in when I want a quick fix, or if I can't spare the time for a 100-player match.

But I’m hoping that for at least some of the 180,000 diving in each day, Blitz Royale is their introduction, or re-introduction, to Fortnite, and that they'll branch out to other modes.

There's no building in Blitz Royale, so Zero Build is a natural stepping stone and, I'd argue, a more rewarding one. There are fewer absurd powers, fewer kills, fewer medallions, and fewer opportunities to feel like a god. But being a mere mortal in Fortnite can be just as fun.

Despite what we are told as children, cheaters do sometimes prosper—fairly often, in fact. Every now and then, though, cheaters push their luck a little too far and their bad deeds come around to bite them in the ass. Such is the case of Sebastian Araujo, who won more than $6,800 in Fortnite tournaments after evading a ban, and now owes Epic $175,000 as a result.

The ruling, provided to PC Gamer by Epic, says Araujo was banned from Fortnite on June 6, 2024, after he was busted using a direct memory access device in a Fortnite tournament in order to get around anti-cheat measures. Instead of mending his ways and returning to the light, however, Araujo created at least three "fake accounts" between June and October 2024, and used a hardware spoofer in order to keep playing.

Over that four-month stretch, Araujo took part in at least 18 Fortnite tournaments, winning $6,850—not big-league cash by any stretch, but a hell of a lot more money than I've ever made playing videogames. Unfortunately for Araujo, he also racked up 991 complaints of cheating during that same stretch, and Epic was paying attention.

Epic filed a lawsuit against Araujo in December 2024, and this week the ruling came down: The defendant apparently ignored the whole thing and so Epic scored a default judgment of $168,550 for DMCA and Copyright Act violations, and another $6,971 in attorneys' fees. It wasn't a total win, as Epic's request for another $100,000 in statutory damages for copyright infringement was found to be excessive.

The one upside for Araujo is that he's managed to avoid the public humiliation suffered by fellow Fortnite tourney cheater Morgan 'RepulseGod' Bamford, who in February was forced to turn over his ill-gotten gains, make a public apology for his bad behavior, and promise to never, ever do it again.

The downside, of course, is that he's on the hook for 175 large. Whether humiliation or destitution is your thing, though, the message is the same: Epic takes this sort of thing seriously, and it will come after you.

As for what Epic needs with $175K, which for the rest of us is essentially the equivalent of finding a nickel under the floor mat of your car, the simple answer is that it doesn't: The damages will be donated to Child's Play, a charity that donates toys and games to children's hospitals around the world.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2, called Showdown, refreshes the map and adds a brand new rivalry system that dominates how you'll play. The loot pool is almost entirely new, too—check out our weapon tier list for the best guns. The loot pool is almost entirely new, too—check out our weapon tier list for the best guns.

In this guide I'll explain the map changes including new secret spots, go over the all-important rivalry system and tell you where to find the powerful exotic and mythic weapons, some of them obtained from bosses such as the Ice King.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2 map, storm shape, and driving the Battle Bus

The map looks quite different to Season 1, as you can see.

Epic has added four new POIs: Dark Dominion, Frigid Fortress, Squibbly Shores, New Sanctuary, and Builder's Barracks. The hot-air balloon stations, and the balloon themselves, are gone.

Oddly shaped storms remain from Season 1. Alongside the traditional circle you can now find storms of all shapes and sizes: triangles, rectangles, and more irregular patterns like a crown.

The Battle Bus that drops everyone off to start each match is now driven by a random player who can steer it left and right. It's mostly a gimmick, but if you drive into a supply drop icon then one will fall from the sky.

Two POIs will be labelled blue, denoting that you're more likely to find rare chests there with better items.

And just like last season, don't sleep on vending machines: you'll see them marked on your map and after you build up gold—from eliminations or cash registers—you can buy a whole new loadout.

How Showdown's rivalries work and why they're important

Onto the most important addition to this season: rivalries. These contracts will dictate how you play each round, and completing them rewards you with high-tier weapons and perks.

Starting a rivalry pits two players against each other, and they can both see the rough location of their rival on the map (marked by a red target). Eliminate your rival to earn rivalry points that you can spend on rewards.

Everything starts at the rivalry boards dotted around the map. Look for the crossed swords icons.

The central screen at this station is for starting rivalries. You can't start a new rivalry while one is active.

The screens on the left and right are for spending your rivalry points. These carry over between rounds.

Spending your rivalry points

You can spend your points on weapons or perks.

You can buy exotic weapons—the O.X.R. Rifle, the Wrecker Revolver and the Boom sniper—from the left-hand screen. You'll need to win a certain number of rivalries first to unlock these uber-powerful weapons, and they're expensive, so make sure you're completing as many rivalries as possible to earn points.

You can also upgrade existing weapons in your inventory: simply interact with the screen on the left while carrying the weapon you want to upgrade.

Finally you can buy perks from the right-hand screen. Once you've won 40 rivalries you can buy a perk that marks enemies in red whenever you damage them; after 80 victories, you can buy an infinite stamina perk.

Keep in mind that your rival may be a bot, giving you an easy win. I've found that my first couple of rivals in any given round are usually bots.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2 Showdown boss locations

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2 Showdown boss locations

Four bosses stalk Fortnite's map this season, each with a chance of dropping a mythic weapon. Those bosses are Dark Voyager, Squibbly, Ice King, and Zadie.

As is the fashion in Fortnite now, these bosses do not have set spawns and have a chance to appear in various POIs, so you can't guarantee that you'll meet one. Look for a skull and crossbone on the map to find them.

They do, however, seem to spawn in their "home" POI quite often: the Dark Voyager in Dark Dominion; Squibbly in Squibbly Shores; and the Ice King in Frigid Forest. It's always worth checking these POIs out—even if the bosses aren't there you'll find tons of loot.

Zadie's spawn seems to be the most consistent. Drop in the woods just to the north of Squibbly Shores and look for the icon.

Defeating the bosses has a chance to drop the following mythic weapons.

• Dark Voyager's Obliterator: The mythic version of the chaos reloader shotgun, with two shots instead of one.
• Squibbly's Combat assault rifle: A mythic version of the combat assault rifle. Its fire rate increases as you hold the trigger.
• Ice King's Gauntlets: Their primary fire is a 50-damage projectile with some splash damage; right click for a projectile that creates an icy storm that continuously damages anyone within it (good for team-based modes).
• Mythic Hammer Revolver: A souped-up version of this new revolver that deals 138 damage per headshot. Ouch.

Other mythic weapons and exotics

So that's already three exotics from the rivalries board, and three mythics from bosses. But there are still four other mythics and one other exotic to find in Chapter 7 Season 2:

• Brute Nemesis assault rifle: This mythic nemesis assault rifle has a chance to drop when you drive over a car over the jump at Looper's Leap, from west to east, marked below on the map. Boost as you approach the top of the ramp.
• Brutus' Twin Hammer Shotguns: Lift the weight at Ripped Tides and this mythic has a chance to spawn (eat the steaks dotted around the POI to lift the weight faster).
• The Foundation's Rift Rifle: An exotic version of the DMR—if you charge a shot then you'll create a rift where the bullet lands (ideal for moving around the map). To obtain it, first hire The Foundation NPC at New Sanctuary, then get three kills. The NPC will give you this rifle.
• The drag race at Sandy Strip (marked below) will give you a random mythic weapon.

You'll need two players for this last one, one in each car to start the race. When the race is over a random mythic spawns. In addition to the mythics listed above you can also get the Pinpoint Iron pump shotgun or the Apex Thunder burst SMG.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2: How to open vaults

The season's "Act 2" update added two vaults to the map that are stuffed with loot, including rare chests and the chance to spawn a mythic version of the power gloves, with 40 charges instead of 20.

One is at the bottom of the New Sanctuary base, one is to the south of Frigid Fortress, along the bridge.

To open them you'll first need to grab a keycard, then head to the vault.

The vault locations are marked on the maps below alongside the keycard spawns, courtesy of Fortnite data site fortnite.gg. Remember: for New Sanctuary, you need to get to the bottom of the base, so head inside then find the ziplines to take you all the way down.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2 Showdown: Golden fishing spots

Epic recently added golden fishing spots with rare loot to the Chapter 7 Season 2 map. There's a chance to find one at any of the many fishing holes located around the map – they won't spawn at every location every time, but they're fairly common.

The map below, created using Fortnite tool fortnite.gg, shows all the possible locations

All you need to do is find a fishing rod in a nearby barrel, sling your hook into the golden area, and reel in the gear (a harpoon will also do the trick). You can expect purple-level guns—or even gold guns if you use Pro Fishing Rod.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2 Showdown: Secret places to know on the map

Fortnite marks the big POIs on its map, and there's always good loot there. But you'll want to know about these hidden spots too.

Purple water near new sanctuary

Landing in this purple water grants you three zero-point shards. Each gives you a teleport-like dash: double tap jump to dash in the direction you're traveling. Three doesn't sound like much but they're a huge advantage in any fight. Land in the water, grab some loot from chests, and use the giant purple shard to rift into the sky.

Piano loot room

A secret loot room hidden behind a wall. Land at the marked location and jump down the zipline, then, break the wall shown above. You'll be rewarded with lots of chests, including a rare blue one, and a safe for gold. There's a port-a-potty to take you back to the surface.

Loot llama

The small farm building hides a loot llama: break it for decent gear at the start of a match.

Wonkeeland shooting gallery

Cone curling

At the marked spot you can interact with cones to push them onto a target. If you land a bullseye, you'll find high-level loot.

Lighthouse key

Fishing in the bluey-turquoise waters around Squibbly Shores (marked above), you'll find a keycard. Take that keycard to the lighthouse nearby to unlock a vault filled with goodies.

Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2: Showdown rift anomalies

Rift anomalies are map-wide conditions for all players that can trigger at the end of a storm circle.

They were introduced last season—in season 2, some of the old ones remain but they're joined by some new ones too.

Here are the main anomalies:

• Llamanomaly: Llamas spawn that drop loot when you ride on their backs.
• Storm focus: A rift spawns that shows where the final circle will be.
• Rivalry rumble: Instantly starts rivalries for everyone.
• Stabilize the Rift: Spawns purple rifts guarded by drones. Shoot the drones to extract a powerful item from Fortnite's past, including the O.X.R. rifle, the Havoc pump shotgun and the Wrecker revolver.
• Care packages: Care packages drop from the sky and contain high-level items.
• Gold rush: Gain gold bars from harvesting materials.
• Rift-a-palooza: Rifts that teleport you to the sky spawn all over the map

Where to drop in Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2

The variety and density of this season's map means there are dozens and dozens of viable drop spots. I recommend simply picking a spot and learning it inside out, dropping each time until you get bored. You'll definitely want to drop somewhere near a rivalry board so you can instantly start farming those rivalry coins, because they're so important.

Here are three spots I keep returning to this season.

Building west of the Looper's Leap jump

A fantastic spot for a few reasons. There's gold in cash machines, a rivalry board and, crucially, two car spawns out front. Jump in a car and drive east to Looper's Leap, completing the jump to get top-tier loot (including a potential mythic). Head to the nearby purple water next to pick up zero point shards.

Piano room

Mentioned above, this hidden room to the east of Dark Dominion is rarely contested. You'll get a decent full loadout from it: my next step is to head west into Dark Dominion to pick up rivalries and third-party any fights.

Docks in the far north

The base to the NW of Frigid Fortress has tons of chest—even further north, you can see some docks. It's a quiet landing spot with a slurp truck to juice your shields, plenty of chests, and a jump pad to take you up to Frigid Fortress when you're geared up.