Fortnite publisher Epic Games has come under fire for racist content being allowed to be played in the Creative version of the game.
Several maps have been highlighted by players for being out and out racist and others for having extremely dubious content and objectives, including one called Palestine Zone Wars. Others have thumbnails containing racist tropes that should be easy for mods to spot and instantly remove, and yet they are still playable.
Prominent Fortnite content creator HypeX was one of the first to call out the issue on X saying, “This chapter launch was good and all, and ik (I know) yall just came back from vacation, but please get to banning maps like this ASAP @FortniteGame, really disappointing if you let them stay up for longer. And there’s no excuse for the first map to stay up.”
We aren’t going to embed the tweet here as it contains images of some of the racist thumbnails in question that do not need any further dissemination across the internet. One map MonkeyBoxPVP is clearly racially aimed when you see the image used.
Fortnite is a game that has a large amount of younger players and it is worrying that they can be so easily exposed to this content. When you offer out creative tools to the masses there is always going to be an element that uses it for their own reasons or amusements but that is why a r robust modding system needs to be in place to deal with it.
It should not really need HYPEX with their three million followers on X to have to highlight the issue, even though it is great they have called it out.
Fortnite was the game on everybody’s lips at the end of 2023 with highly successful launches of its new season and spin-off modes such as Lego Fortnite.
We have reached out to Epic Games for comment.
