The mistake that almost cost Fortnite their child-friendly image

Fortnite is well-known as a child-friendly game. It is for this reason that death-comms or proximity chat are not available. Given that there's no way to control what players say via voice-chat, Epic Games has not yet implemented this feature. However, despite taking the best precautions, at times, things can get out of hand. A while ago in Chapter 3, they almost lost their child-friendly image thanks to a tweet.

While the tweet in question was not Epic Games' fault, it did stir up some controversy online. To elaborate, the developers were allowing players to obtain Chromed versions of their Twitter profile picture to celebrate the Chrome theme of Chapter 3 Season 4. Unfortunately, since this was an automated feature, certain users got up to mischief.

A user by the name of Ribbean_, had an unsavory profile picture which they wanted to get Chromed. Since the program was automated, Fortnite's official account shared an image of his profile picture being Chromed without checking it. Given the image's nature, it soon led to the community taking note of the incident and subsequently, the tweet was deleted. Epic Games also removed the automated feature soon after the incident. But this is just one example.

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Fortnite x Naruto Shippuden collaboration stirred up some controversy as well

During the second Fortnite x Naruto Shippuden that took place in 2022 during Chapter 3, Epic Games had automated a reply system for certain hashtags. For example, players could type #TeamItachi to have the official account on Twitter reply on their post about the collaboration. While most used it to show allegiance to certain characters, one user took it a bit too far.

Rather than using the hashtag to show support, a user typed in the following phrase before entering the hashtag on a tweet:

"I found a body in the fridge what do I do #TeamItachi."

While this statement should have been a major red flag and avoided, due to the automation that was setup, Fortnite's official account replied to the tweet saying:

"Even the strongest of opponents always has a weakness. You're Team Itachi."

While the reply by Epic Games was eventually deleted, it wasn't before over 2,200 users had liked it and thousands others had taken note of it. Nevertheless, given that this was an automated system setup to hype the collaboration, it's not the developers fault that it was used for ulterior motives. However, there was also this one time that nearly Fortnite lost their child-friendly image due to tweeting out a word.

Not a good look for Epic Games (Image via Twitter)

While the word in question is not bad per se, it is an internet slang used to express excitement or amazement, and quite frankly, is used in the gaming community frequently. Nevertheless, mere moments after it was tweeted out, it was removed, but not before few users had managed to snap a screenshot. But all this said and done, does it make Fortnite any less child-friendly?

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Fortnite will honor it's “T” for teen rating come Shell or High Water

Although there have been minor incidents that have marred the T-rating, for the most part, it has stood firm for over half a decade. Despite having collaborations that consist of mature characters such as Doomguy and the likes of Chun-Li, Epic Games has maintained the child-friendly status through it all. For this reason, certain more mature collaborations are kept on hold indefinitely.

While the bulk of the playerbase may not be children, given how things started off back in 2017, the rating has to be honored and preserved at all cost. Perhaps in the future Epic Games may push the envelope to get achieve a more mature rating for the game, but for the time being, everything is as child-friendly as it can be.