Dear Epic Games, @Fortnite@TimSweeneyEpic
With all due respect.
What are you doing to Fortnite?
Since when has the game become 18+?
Recently, we have seen you use profanity and curse words in promoting Fortnite.
Then we saw you testing the water with Kim K's skin, promoting her aggressively across all platforms.
Now you are taking it further with the upcoming Battle Pass featuring a sexually explicit female skin with no covered variant. This skin had the highest screen time in your recent promotional video. With the start of the new season, she will be on your main loading screen, your launcher, and your promotional assets everywhere. All players will be exposed to her. This is not counting the number of content creators that have and will include her in their content across all social media.
If a similar skin were to be featured on a UEFN map or the thumbnail, I am sure that you would have taken action against them.
Your upcoming season is themed around running drug empires and drug RUNNERS.
These changes are pushing what was a 12+ game into territory more appropriate for 18+ audiences, exposing children to nudity/indecency, profanity, and drug-adjacent themes without meaningful safeguards.
Pushing this type of content toward a game made for everyone, especially kids, is morally unacceptable, religiously forbidden, and legally questionable.
Even if all content is legally abiding by the Teen rating system, this does not mean every player launching the game consents to this content.
I am speaking out because I know this type of content will result in Fortnite getting banned in some countries, which will harm everyone. From Epic Games to every content creator and player.
I want to highlight a precedent Epic Games has already set in Fortnite: skins displaying sensitive content (including guns, grenades, along with scary, spooky skins) are automatically removed from 3+ game modes to protect younger players from that content. This shows that Epic has both the awareness and the technical capability to apply content filters based on audience appropriateness.
This has to be enforced for sexually explicit skins and their related content from loading screens, promotional assets, and news feeds.
Similar to the licensed music mute option and Confrontational Emotes, where players and content creators decide what to see and hear. Skin filter should also be an option for players to adjust and hide skins that they deem unacceptable. This could also be used as a competitive feature where it disables some skins from taking advantage of their visible features to gain a competitive advantage or blind spots.
Give the power to the players to decide what they want to see, hear, and show.
This is not only a matter of content policy, but it is a matter of moral responsibility. Families across the globe entrust their children to this platform. Content that promotes nudity, drug culture, or profanity violates that trust universally.
I know that these types of skins and themes might have proven to be highly profitable for older Fortnite players. I am not asking you to delete or remove it, but to add features and filters before it's too late.
As a content creator, I am directly impacted: I cannot safely publish or stream Fortnite content to my audience without exposing them to this content. And I assume other family-friendly creators share this concern. I want to continue supporting Fortnite, but Epic must meet its community halfway.
I know @JustTeddii and @EpicTofuChris and so many more amazing people at Epic are putting so much great work into this game. I am aware of how overwhelming the community response has been recently. But I hope this matter gets looked into for the sake of everyone.