False Facts About Fortnite You Thought Were True
You've memorized the location of every treasure chest. You can perform each and every one of Fortnite's emotes from memory. You can explain each and every theory about Fortnite: Battle Royale's ongoing mysteries in painstaking detail, and when it comes time to dish on the best strategies, hottest tips, and behind-the-scenes gossip, you're all over it.
In other words, you know Fortnite, and you're able to separate fact from fiction — or are you? After all, when something is as big as Epic Games' 100-person battle royale, there's going to be all kinds of rumors, misconceptions, and hoaxes to go along with it. If you've been duped, that's okay. There's a lot going on in the Fortnite world, and it's hard to stay on top of it all. The following "facts" may not be true, but these explanations should help you sort the fake news from the real deal. After all, you're an expert, and experts stay informed. Settle for nothing less.
Your guns are slowing you down
Checking out online Fortnite tips and tricks articles is a great way to get better at the game, especially when you're just starting out, but you need to make certain that you're following the right advice. Not every tutorial is created equal, and many of the Fortnite guides out there — especially the ones created when the game was new and nobody really knew what they were doing — are full of bogus information.
For example, many players swear that running with a gun drawn in Fortnite will slow your character down, and that if you want to achieve top speeds you should put the firearms away and wield your pickaxe instead. As the logic goes, bulky items like rocket launchers weigh more than a handful of bandages, and your character will move slower in order to handle the extra weight. Makes sense, right?
Except this isn't the real world. This is Fortnite, where the laws of physics don't apply. The folks over at GamesRadar conducted a test in which they jogged and sprinted across Fortnite's football field, and sure enough, they found that Fortnite characters move at the same speed no matter what they're holding. So, where does this misconception come from? Well, weapons do affect running speeds in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the other big battle royale game on the market. Fortnite: Battle Royale "borrowed" many mechanics from PUBG, but not that one, so feel free to wield whatever you want while running for cover.
Fortnite made video game tutors a thing
In July 2018, The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell: parents across the country are paying experts up to $20 an hour to teach their kids how to get better at Fortnite. At the time, the news was greeted with condescending disbelief and snarky ridicule. To outside observers, the mere concept of a private video game lesson is proof that this whole Fortnite thing has gone too far.
Well, maybe not. These articles don't bother to mention that video game tutors pre-date Fortnite by at least a decade. Tom Taylor, founder of the now-defunct Gaming-lessons.com, started his site in 2005. A student at UC Berkeley offered StarCraft lessons way back in 2009. As esports and competitive gaming have become more and more mainstream, the number of services offering video game instruction has grown along with them.
In fact, in the grand scheme of things, $20 an hour is actually pretty cheap. Japan's GameLesson, which helps players get better at Street Fighter V and Super Smash Bros., charges $39 for an online lesson and around $97 for an in-person tutoring session. On Gamer Sensei, which caters to fans of games like League of Legends, Overwatch, and yes, Fortnite, top-ranked coaches charge upwards of $100 an hour.
Fortnite might've brought gaming tutors into the limelight, but they've been around well before most players had ever heard of a battle royale, and they'll still be here when Fortnite gives way to the next big thing.
Fortnite is the key to fame and fortune
Of course, things get a little dicier once you get into the reason why some parents are so eager to buy their kids Fortnite lessons. If you're getting a Fortnite tutor so that your offspring can rack up those big video game bucks, you might want to reconsider. Yes, big-name schools like NYU offer video game-related scholarships. At the time of writing, however, the only university currently offering a Fortnite scholarship is Ohio's Ashland University. That's cool, but Ashland has less than 3,400 undergraduates, meaning that there aren't a ton of slots for would-be pros of Fortnite (or anyone else, really), and the scholarship only covers less than 20% of Ashland's annual $21,342 tuition (and that's not counting the extra ten grand you'll need for room and board).
On the other hand, Fortnite streamer Ninja pulls in half a million dollars a month, so you might think there's lots of money in making Fortnite videos. As it turns out, Ninja is the exception, not the rule. Top YouTube creators — i.e., the people who pull in 14 million views a month — only average $17,000 a year in earnings. In other words, if you want to get rich, stick to those SAT prep classes.
The winner of the second round of the Fortnite Summer Skirmish cheated
It's no surprise that Epic is betting big on Fortnite's esports potential. Not only is a functional esports community a great way to keep players engaged, but the game makes over $300 million every month. Compared to that, Epic's planned $100 million esport investment is a drop in the bucket.
So far, though, Fortnite: Battle Royale's competitive scene is off to a shaky start. Not only was the first round of Epic's Summer Skirmish plagued by lag, weird strategies, and a poor spectator experience, but when iDropz_Bodies won round two (and $130,000 in prize money), people immediately accused him of cheating. In a 2000-plus word Reddit manifesto, iDropz_Bodies was accused of colluding with opponents, quitting matches when they weren't full of ringers, and cheating his way into the tournament in the first place.
The thread took off and earned over 40,000 upvotes from salty Fortnite fans, but here's what you may not have heard: Epic investigated these allegations and cleared iDropz_Bodies of any wrongdoing. In a separate post, Epic Games esports designer Colin Fogle refuted each and every assault on iDropz_Bodies' good name. Every single of one Bodies' victims was a different person, making thrown matches unlikely. He didn't quit games when conditions looked unfavorable, and any streaming irregularities can be chalked up to the PS4 itself. Basically, iDropz_Bodies won fair and square. If you don't like that, well, that's on you.
Fortnite is bad for kids
Fortnite is causing havoc in schools. Teachers around the world report that the game has more or less taken over classrooms, where students are trying to sneak in a few rounds during lectures and showing up sleep-deprived after all-night gaming sessions. But is the game as bad for them as the press would have you believe?
Maybe not. As Ed Week points out, Fortnite's basic gameplay — teaming up with friends to build forts and shoot rivals — mirrors the kind of thing that many kids get up to even when video games aren't an option. Nerf guns are still around for a reason, y'know? In fact, Ed Week argues that, in an age where many children are kept busy until dark with homework and other extracurricular activities, Fortnite can actually function as a much needed "third space," i.e., a place outside of school and home where kids can connect.
Not every adult is so down on Fortnite, either, and many have figured out how to use Epic's shooter to their advantage. Some use the game as an incentive for good behavior. Others are keeping their kids fit by enrolling them in Fortnite-themed dance classes. Sure, too much screen time is a real concern for developing minds, but many of today's parents binged on Street Fighter II, Doom, Pokémon, and GoldenEye when they were little and they're mostly fine. Young Fortnite players will be too.
Disney XD will air a Fortnite animated series
Between Star Wars, Marvel, and (soon-to-be) former Fox properties like The Simpsons, Avatar, and Alien, it's Disney's world. We're just living in it. As such, it's hard to fault anyone who believed the rumors that the Disney XD would broadcast a cartoon called Fortnite: The TV Show. Fortnite already looks like a Pixar cartoon — oh, yeah, Disney owns that company, too — the game is huge with Disney XD's target audience, and the channel already broadcasts a large amount of gaming content.
Except, of course, that the announcement wasn't true, as Epic Games PR official Nick Chester quickly confirmed. If you look carefully at the tweet that started it all, you should be able to figure that out for yourself. The Twitter user who started the rumor goes by the handle "DisnayXD," not "DisneyXD," and it isn't actually a verified account. It just uses an icon to look like one. The tweet also misspells "premiere," which would be an odd mistake for an official PR announcement.
You know what, though? Despite all of the obvious red flags, people got so excited about the idea of a Fortnite cartoon that maybe Disney should follow up anyway. These days, there aren't many companies bigger than Epic, but Disney is one of them. Go ahead, Mr. Iger. Give 'em a call.
Keyboard and mouse players have an advantage
Don't bring a gamepad to a mouse and keyboard fight. You'll get creamed. If you've played online shooters any time, well, ever, you know that a trusty controller and its dual analog sticks simply can't match a standard PC interface when it comes to speed and accuracy. Fortnite is no exception.
On the PlayStation 4, which is the only Fortnite-playing console that officially supports a keyboard and mouse set-up, some canny players plugged in some extra accessories to get a leg up on their DualShock-wielding peers. It worked. Oh boy, did it work. Here's the thing, though: while this fact was true, it's not going to be true in the future. In fact, by the time that you read this, there's a good chance that Epic will have taken measures to stop keyboard and mouse players' dominance once and for all.
In August 2018, Epic announced that in a patch that's coming very, very soon, Fortnite will start grouping players by input method. On consoles, players using gamepads will be matched with other players using gamepads, while players using a keyboard and a mouse will have to fight each other, and never the twain shall meet — with one exception: if you're in a pre-made squad with a keyboard and mouse user, you'll be matched with players using that same setup, even if you're using a controller yourself. But c'mon. If that's the case, you're kind of asking for it.
Fortnite's popularity is hurting other games
The idea that Fortnite's all-encompassing hype is cutting into the sales of other big games isn't just some armchair quarterbacking: it's something that investors are very concerned about. In the first half of 2018, an analyst credited an 11% drop in Activision Blizzard's stock price to fears that the company couldn't withstand the Fortnite onslaught. Electronic Arts and Take-Two saw similar declines.
Wall Street shouldn't have worried. While it's probably better to be safe than sorry, all three of those companies are doing just fine. In fact, according to spokespeople, Fortnite is actually helping them. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick credits Fortnite with "expand[ing] the marketplace" by bringing in new gamers — and, therefore, more potential customers — while Electronic Arts COO Blake Jorgensen says that Fortnite is "bringing younger people into the marketplace and younger people into first-person shooters." That's good for everyone. The numbers back it up, too. As of May 2018, Activision Blizzard stock is up 12% year-on-year, while EA has seen gains of around 20%.
Take-Two hasn't officially commented on the Fortnite phenomenon, but that company isn't hurting, either. In August 2018, just a month out from Fortnite: Battle Royale's first birthday, Take-Two announced that it was already beating projections for the 2019 fiscal year thanks to Grand Theft Auto Online's continued success — and that's before the launch of massive games like NBA 2K19 and a little something called Red Dead Redemption 2. Don't worry. Take-Two is going to be just fine.
Spending money on Fortnite: Battle Royale gives you a competitive advantage
One of the main reasons why Fortnite: Battle Royale has gotten so big, so fast is that it's free to play. You can spend money on Fortnite, though. Ponying up some extra cash is one way to get some decorative extras, and as with everything else Fortnite, it's a pretty popular system — after all, that $2 million that Fortnite makes every day has to come from somewhere.
All of these upgrades are cosmetic, however. Some people don't realize that. According to a survey conducted by LendEDU, not only do people who buy Fortnite stuff spend an average of $84.67 on in-game items, but about 20% of them think that spending money is giving them some kind of a competitive advantage. These are people who consider Fortnite "the main video game they play," too. These aren't casual dabblers. They should know better.
Of course, it's pretty easy to see where some of the confusion comes from. Spend just a little bit of time on online forums, and you're bound to run across threads arguing that some skins have smaller "hitboxes," meaning that they're harder for enemy guns to hit. As far as we can tell, that's actually only happened once. During a St. Patrick's Day stream, Ninja ran across a pint-sized player appropriately dressed like a leprechaun. According to Epic, that was merely a bug, so if you can't afford to shell out for your Fortnite habit, don't worry.
Fortnite: Battle Royale is shutting down
The people at Epic Games aren't making Fortnite: Battle Royale out of the goodness of their hearts. Epic is a company. Its job is to make money. So, no, Fortnite: Battle Royale isn't going to shut down. It's bringing in way, way too much cash. In fact, with the announcement of Fortnite Funko Pops, Fortnite Monopoly, and Fortnite action figures, it seems pretty obvious that Epic is going to keep the Fortnite money train running for as long as possible.
And yet, for some reason, the rumor that Fortnite: Battle Royale is about to follow in the dodo's footsteps keeps popping up. As Twinfinite reports, the hoax started with a fake screengrab claiming that Battle Royale was going to end thanks to a lawsuit from PUBG Corporation, the company that makes PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Now, PUBG Corporation actually did sue Epic for copyright infringement about a month after the hoax started, but the suit didn't have legs and ended about a month later. Fortnite emerged unscathed.
In September 2018, a new spin on the hoax appeared, claiming that Epic has to shutter Fortnite: Battle Royale because it can't keep pace with the game's meteoric rise. Once again, it was totally bogus. At this point, Fortnite: Battle Royale is too big to fail. It'll probably end some day, once all of the players have moved on to something else, but that won't happen for decades. For the foreseeable future, Fortnite is very, very safe.