In one of its recent updates, Fortnite banned jumping, emoting and pick-axe swinging. Well it’s a bit more complicated than that.
While it might sound funny at first, the changes coming to Fortnite’s competitive scene make sense, in a way. The game’s official guidelines already made coordinating with enemy players a punishable offense, and now the list bannable behavior is expanding. Why, you might ask? The answer is simple – communication. The latest update extends the list of offenses with:
- Jumping
- Emoting
- Pick-axe swinging
- Toy tossing
In the official post Epic Games remind everyone of their Competitive Fortnite Collusion Rule:
Players may not work together to deceive or otherwise cheat other players during any match (“Collusion”).
Epic go into detail by providing examples of punishable missteps, including teaming, planned movement, communication, which is interpreted to include all kinds of verbal and non-verbal signals, as well as the intentional dumping of items for an opposing player to grab.
Communication has been a massive problem in competitive matches lately, even in official Fortnite competitions. As a result of the guidelines update, anyone caught trying to communicate with the enemy to gain an advantage will receive a penalty, while repeat offenders will may have it even worse than that.
Jumping, emoting, pick-axe swinging, and toy tossing are not punishable by default, but only if you’re actively trying to send a message to an enemy player. Epic made sure to underline they do not ban “pacifism style gameplay” if you ever choose to do so, but killing your enemies is usually the expected behavior.
All of this remains a very subjective matter that’s not always clear so there will most likely be cases where a player gets punished for simply fooling around. If you want to avoid that, save your shenanigans for casual play and not competitive.
