Fortnite is one of the largest and most successful live-service titles to date, which makes the leaks it produces a popular commodity among fans. This leads to a whole community of people looking to release the information as soon as they can and it seems that Epic Games has finally had enough.
According to a popular Fortnite data miner and content creator that goes by ITalk, Epic Games has begun to reach out to content creators and asked them to no longer share skin release dates. While they didn’t show the email, ITalk only specifically mentions the release dates and not the actual skins themselves.
This follows the recent leak of weeks of Item Shops that appeared online, spoiling the work of Epic’s artists who spent who knows how long creating those skins. Fortunately, none of the larger data miners shared the leaks or what was in them, but it seems that Epic Games has taken notice. The developer is clearly not happy and has put its foot down, but it’s not clear how severe this notice is.
For all intents and purposes, Epic has been very lenient when it comes to leaks of its skins, events, and nearly everything else on Twitter. The fact that the developer has finally made clear notice and set a boundary after over five years of leaks are at least a clear sign that the trust has been broken. It’s unclear if there will be consequences for these actions.
Many have taken to ITalk’s replies to state that the community will share them anyway, but this comes from the perspective that hasn’t faced wide DMCA action. If Epic Games were to go to the extreme as Warner Bros. did with MultiVersus, data miners could see their posts or entire accounts removed from Twitter due to a simple legal request. This alone would likely break the game’s leaking community.
The fact that it has been so lenient thus far was a showing of trust and this message seems to be a warning to a community that abused it.
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