Fortnite MESSED UP!

If you play this in Fortnite, you'll get an instant ban! Watch this video so that doesn't happen, and you learn why Epic is secretly paying hundreds of dollars to players. Today, we're investigating the biggest controversies in Fortnite, and we'll start with Renegade Raider.

That's right, the real original skin was released in the shop this week, sending the community into an all-out brawl. Both Renegade Raider and Aerial Assault Trooper are available, but with a catch: you have to get a million XP to purchase them. Not only does this mean anyone could buy them, but it also removes the whole idea of these being the rarest skins, something a lot of fans aren't happy about.

Moving on to the elephant in the room—or technically, the head in the toilet—players around the world are boycotting Skibidi Toilet, and it's become the most divisive topic in the game's history. Check social media, and you'll see it's blowing up with tons of backlash, saying things like "Fortnite is never beating the kids' game allegations," or calling it "brain rot slop" and "embarrassing. " I will say, the millions of people who actually watch Skibidi Toilet think it's the greatest thing ever, so there's both sides to it.

Regardless, it will probably print them money. But this next mistake just cost Epic Games half a billion dollars. All these years of Epic putting cosmetics behind an item shop timer has been a huge problem because players had no idea when their favorite skin would leave, forcing them to spend money as quickly as possible.

This was a quote-unquote "dark pattern" and a quote-unquote "unlawful practice. " But it didn't stop there, because Epic was found guilty by the FTC of collecting personal data from children without their parents' consent. They knew a ton of kids played Fortnite and still illegally obtained their online data.

In fact, the FTC accused Epic of not even honoring data deletion requests, causing a massive issue. Their mistake caused the FTC to give out the biggest fine in their history, charging Epic over $500 million. Half of that is being sent back to players in the form of a nationwide refund, and anyone who signed up would have recovered a few hundred a couple of weeks ago.

Now, this is where you need to pay attention, or you could get banned. For the past few years, Epic has been paying out a ton of money to Fortnite map makers—nothing wrong with it. However, a lot of the creators realized they could promote their maps by pretending they give out more XP than pretty much any other experience.

In reality, XP is calibrated across all modes, so you usually get the same amount no matter what you play. Despite this, so many creators have been using YouTube or TikTok to promote low-quality maps and just get a ton of players in them to earn XP. This mistake has resulted in Epic paying millions of dollars to these creators, who are basically treating it as a get-rich-quick scheme and misleading thousands of people to do so.

Well, on Friday the 13th of December, Epic turned into the Grim Reaper, and they actually went after the very creators they have been funding this whole time. They quickly changed their terms of service and were able to swoop in and clamp down on the XP clickbait, banning a ton of maps for false promotion, including the videos promoting them. Because of all these takedown strikes, YouTubers across the board have their channels facing termination for good.

One example is Loot Station, whose entire channel revolves around XP farming and glitches. His channel has now been deleted by Epic, and it's causing a social media storm. Some fans argue that he deserves it; others claim he's nothing like the others who make fake XP maps.

It's a crazy situation for sure, but a lot of players view the clampdown on XP clickbait as a great thing, while others are kind of missing it. Let me know what you guys think in the comments below. Snoop Dogg appeared in Fortnite again right after the Game Awards, this time a free outfit for Winterfest.

I'm pretty sure everybody universally loves Snoop Dogg, but when they realized he was the Christmas skin, the reaction was not what I was expecting. "We just got him! Let's have someone new already!

" The same thing happened with the other Christmas crossover with Shaquille O'Neal. But look, I've got to say the controversy surrounding these two doesn't even make sense because it's not like we had zero Christmas skins this year, with Fortnite adding Mariah Carey's mini live events, teasers for Hatsune Miku, five original outfits, Snoop, and Shaq; like they're literally just the icing on the cake. There is one controversy that has majorly affected Chapter 6, and nobody's talking about it.

I know it sounds clickbait when I say that, but listen to this. As you know, Epic designs new chapters and seasons months in advance; it's why they're able to tease collabs way before they happen. But this also means that if there's an issue during development, we won't see it until months down the line.

That's why players are logging into Chapter 6 and realizing that their brand-new storyline feels weird. The quests are super in-depth, and we go over all of it in our latest story video, but it's missing something: a feature that has been used in the game for years now to tell the narrative—voice lines. Why can't you find a single voice line in Fortnite this season?

Well, it's all because of the actor strike that happened back in July. Literally no one was able to record any voice lines, and Fortnite just decided to make the season without them. It feels so weird now.

We could all understand it, unlike the fact that Epic just gave away a paid outfit. For free and didn't refund anybody, Dapperman has been in the game ever since Chapter 2 as a fully priced item shop skin. He even appeared in Creator Locker bundles, and yet, despite being out for years, Epic clearly had enough of him.

Instead of designing a reskin they could give away for free, they straight up grabbed the full-price original and said, "Hey guys, who wants it? " Now anyone who linked their Lego account to their Epic login will get Dapper Min for absolutely zero cost. The worst part is they haven't addressed it or even offered refunds.

We're learning that Epic has no chill, and they even decided to settle a controversy themselves. Now, finding a hacker or exploiter in regular lobbies isn't that common in Fortnite, unlike some other games. We're not exactly in the middle of a big hacker problem, and yet Epic still cracks down on anyone trying to make one.

In December, they announced they had found a player who was cheating in tournaments as an example of them. Epic publicly tweeted that this player used cheating software and hardware, trying to avoid getting caught by using multiple accounts. It didn't work.

"Cheating has no place in Fortnite, and we're doing everything we can to stop it, including legal action. " That's right; they are taking this person known as Sebastian to court. The lawsuit says they want him to pay back any money he earned from tournaments and reimbursement for lawyer fees, not to mention additional damages on top of that, which Epic usually donates to charity.

With cases like this, apparently Sebastian won tens of thousands of dollars from cheating in these cups, and there are rumors that Epic is suing him in return for over $200,000. This is an example I could get behind to show other cheaters exactly what happens when you get caught. Considering he won money from hacking, it's technically fraud.

The controversies continue when Snoop Dogg joined during Remix. There's nothing wrong with the set or design; everyone loved it, except his dance was an, uh, interesting choice to say the least. To put it simply, Fortnite straight-up added "The Walk" into their game—a dance that has been used in ways Epic probably doesn't want to associate with, but they did it anyway.

At least you could use a skin from Fortnite Remix, unlike the fact they deleted all of the SUVs on the map for that whole season. Now, usually, it wouldn't be a problem; they did have to replace them with the low riders, after all. But this is Chapter 5, and Epic has been selling cosmetics for the SUVs pretty much all year.

Then, all of a sudden, players weren't allowed to use the skins that they paid real money for. To make it even worse, these SUV cosmetics were still in the item shop for the entirety of Fortnite Remix. Kind of crazy when you think about it.

In fact, one of the skins was the second most controversial collab of 2024. It's a crossover that Epic employees have said they hated working on and are still flaming to this day. I'm, of course, talking about the Tesla Cybertruck.

Now, this is a problem for a number of reasons. First of all, people absolutely hated the idea of Epic working with Elon Musk, who has been extremely controversial in the last couple of years. Even with that aside, it's also known as one of the ugliest vehicles in the market right now, and the fact that Epic was charging over $20 for it felt like a crime.

Tesla is notorious for never spending money on advertising, which means it's more than likely that Epic reached out to them to do this collab—definitely for publicity. A lot of the developers said they were disappointed to work on it, saying, "I hope I never have to model a stainless steel fridge on wheels like this again," and "That truck looks effing silly. " And the CEO of that company is a piece of.

. . you get the idea here.

As for new issues, Chapter 6 has been coming under fire recently for having a ton of problems. While it is definitely an amazing season, their biggest change is full of controversy. First person has been in the works for like half a decade at this point, and when it finally dropped, it only supported like seven guns—not to mention a ton of skins that make first person unusable due to big hands, arms, and outfits, literally just blocking your sight entirely.

When ballistic mode dropped, there were over 100,000 players trying to log in, but the mode didn't even work for the first few hours—literally unplayable—which made no sense considering they launched Fortnite OG in the exact same way to ten times more players, and that went off without a hitch. Players had booked a day off to play ballistic and were frustrated that they couldn't log in. It's understandable; at least it has years of updates planned, unlike a game that just came out and has already been abandoned.

Rocket Racing was introduced right before we came into 2024, and since then, it has received basically no content. Once Epic dropped the ability to make your very own racetracks in UFN, they actually stopped supporting it entirely. This is because, and putting it nicely, Rocket Racing gets basically no players compared to the other modes, and with the car skins being so expensive, people are only buying these to use in Battle Royale.

Not to mention, the Rocket League team is kind of busy working on their actual game rather than the Fortnite mode, so it didn't make sense to keep detracting them with a side project that nobody is playing. Even Save the World has been getting more updates than Rocket Racing. This year, making it one of Fortnite's first failed projects, those were the biggest controversies in Fortnite in 2024.

Hope you guys enjoyed! It's been Tommy, and keep it here on Top Five Gaming.