Fortnite 'Community Choice': A one-hit wonder that ended abruptly

Fortnite Community Choice events were introduced on September 11, 2019. Also known as Item Shop voting, Community Choice was advertised by Fortnite as a way to have previous skins return to the shop. Ideally, the community would vote on 1 of 3 returning skins and have a chance to buy that skin.

In the following weeks after the initial test vote, Epic changed the items that players would vote on. Rather than have returning skins, they started advertising three new skins and then having the community choose just one. That continued for two weeks following.

Aggravation in the community began when players realized that the other new skins weren't coming back, and even if they were, players didn't like choosing between skins that they hadn't seen themselves in game. On twitter, there was plenty of debate going back and forth over whether the feature was a welcome addition or a detriment to players that wanted the new skins.

There are many Fortnite fans that saw no problem with the voting system, but it was apparent though attention and the expression of missing out on potential skins that many routine collectors of different skins were unhappy with the change.

PLEASE don't have us vote on unreleased skins!

— I Talk Fortnite (@ITalkFortnite) November 26, 2019

The Community Choice events happened for a total of 4 weeks. There were 2 weeks in September and 2 weeks in November. The feature never went beyond Fall of 2019. Of the 4 weeks in total, only the initial week of the Fortnite Community Choice contained returning skins.

That also fed into some of the uproar with the then new test feature. The Community Choice event was deliberately not delivering on what was promised by Epic for Fortnite. The players didn't want to choose between brand new skins, they wanted a chance at previous ones.

The event was becoming a bad idea, and the community was expressing unhappiness on social media. One can only guess that the aggravation also led to losing out on some money for skins that otherwise would have sold fine by themselves.

Epic has kept quiet on the feature as a whole and turned out to be very reminiscent of the community voting on to bring different weapons back; another feature that ended up bringing frustration to Fortnite. For now, community voting is a feature players likely will not see again, unless Epic tweaks the votes to bring back old skins to the shop.