In the online shooter Fortnite: Battle Royale, developer Epic temporarily disabled the mechs in all game modes. You won’t encounter any B.I.E.S.T. for the time being. This is due to a bug that occurs when the mech jumps. The mechs are now active again – but not in all modes.
This is Epic’s announcement: On the night from Friday to Saturday at 1:49 AM our time, the message from Epic was shared on Twitter: They have temporarily disabled the mechs in all playlists while working to fix an issue that occurs during the “Air Stomp” attack.
As soon as they know more, they will update us.
Professional player SypherPK finds “Game breaking” bug
What is the problem? In the “Air Stomp” attack, a mech jumps up and then comes crashing down. It causes significant damage.
The mech destroys buildings and resources and could farm resources until a nerf.
The deactivation is likely due to a problem that player Ali “SypherPK” Hassan found. He shared a video on Reddit showing this bug.
The player takes damage in the clip, even though he is clearly outside of the range of the “Air Stomp” attack:
- The enemy in the mech hits him with the 1st Air Stomp, dealing 70 damage – that would be okay
- During the 2nd Air Stomp, the mech misses the player but still deals 70 damage – a problem
- And with the 3rd Air Stomp, Sypher is far away, he has bolted with a shockwave grenade, yet he still takes 70 damage – a serious problem
Epic likely disabled the mech due to this clip.
Players call: Remove them completely
How players are reacting: Players are pretty united on Twitter: The temporary fix should be permanent. They do not want the mechs in the game anymore:
- The mechs are a new feature in Season 10 that is controversial and has already sparked many protests.
- According to Epic, the mechs are supposed to help weak players have experiences of success in Fortnite.
This also happened: On August 30, there were issues with “Turbo Building”. Here, players felt something was off, after changes were made on the 28th only to be reversed on the 29th.
Players felt that on August 30, building felt somehow wrong.
Epic reported last night that they have identified and resolved this issue.
Update: Mechs are back, but not everywhere
Update 1.9. 9:48 AM: Epic has resolved the problem and the mechs are back, but for now only in the normal modes and the Limited Time modes. In the “competitive playlists”, they will remain disabled for a few more days. Epic announced this on Twitter.
