Fortnite fans say it's 'gone soft' with ‘toxic’ emote screening
When you think of 'toxic' gaming, you tend to think of those Call of Duty lobbies of yesteryear. More recently, there's been the whole 'teabagging' debacle and people abusing proximity chat, although it's still a much healthier community than it was back in the day.
In terms of family-friendly games, Fortnite is one of the most wholesome. Hitting enemies with a Boogie Bomb while dressed as a giant ice cream, building a peaceful LEGO community, or rocking out with Fortnite Festival means Fortnite has largely managed to avoid a toxic culture - although there are always exceptions.
Fortnite lets you block 'toxic' emote
It's become a Fortnite tradition for some to pull out an emote to celebrate a win. While it's frustrating to have someone perform "Padam Padam" over your downed corpse as they celebrate, and you're forced to watch their celebration, it's something of a first-world problem.
Fortnite's latest update lets you block certain emotes that could be deemed 'toxic'. The banned list includes Laugh It Up, Take the L, Whipcrack, and Make It Plantain. In particular, the last two have potential racist connotations and are used by a small minority for the wrong reasons.
Epic Games itself has confirmed the news and tweeted, "We want emotes to be a source of good vibes, but a few (*cough* Take the L *cough*) can sometimes feel a bit overly confrontational. Tomorrow's update will introduce a new Confrontational Emotes setting to toggle visibility on these Emotes."
You can now toggle certain emotes via the "Social Privacy" setting and can default only to allow players in your party to show these emotes or make them invisible from all players.
Fortnite fans react to emote blocking
As you can imagine, the news has gone down about as well as expected. Some claim the recent involvement of Disney has led to this, while others have pointed to the various challenges where Epic has asked us to emote.
One disgruntled gamer wrote, "The game's gone soft 💀," while another added, "Why are we baby-proofing the game?" A third said, "The decay of decisions in this game has been unbelievable since the departure of Donald Mustard."
This isn't Fortnite's only emote scandal, with Ged Griddy potentially vanishing from the shop. Rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again has been arrested on six charges in Utah, including possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person.
As YoungBoy is known for the song "Right Foot Creep", his arrest could see Fortnite add his emote to the growing blacklist that includes the likes of Travis Scott's Out West. Whatever you think of Fortnite's censoring of emotes, at least the game is trying to keep up its wholesome credentials.
