Fortnite has a serious racism problem, to the point of banning certain dances and emotes

Fortnite has a serious problem with racism in its competitive modes. Things have gotten so bad that Epic Games has had to take a drastic measure by banning the use of certain cosmetic items such as dances, emotes, and graffiti in competitive modes. Read on to find out more, including which dances are banned in Fortnite:

Fortnite bans many dances and emotes in competitive modes to avoid racism

Though Epic Games hasn’t publicly commented on the matter, at 11:33 am ET on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, Epic Games banned a very specific and disturbingly conspicuous set of cosmetic items from Fortnite’s competitive modes. We know this thanks to a bot on the NiteStats Discord server dedicated to Fortnite leaks and changes.

When we dig into the game code to find out what these cosmetic items are, we get a very unpleasant surprise, and suddenly the reason comes to mind with a sudden shudder. What do all these items have in common?

The banned items are mostly monkeys and bananas, but also some other emotes like capoeira or even a Blanka emote. According to NiteStats, there is a macabre trend in TikTok in which users post videos using skins of colored characters and after eliminating other players, they start over and over again using dances and emoticons of monkeys and bananas of which you have above this paragraph, establishing a parallelism between people of color are monkeys, a highly racist stereotype sadly replicated over the years. This is why Epic Games has decided to nip this in the bud... at least in the competitive scene, by banning the use of such dances, graffiti, etc.

In our Fortnite guide, we tell you everything about the new season of the game, including what is included on the Battle Pass or how the renewed map looks like.

Sources | NiteStats, Fortnite Battle Royale