In Fortnite: Battle Royale emotes are basically fun little animations that lighten up the battle. However, sometimes emotes provide an unintended advantage in the game. This makes them even more desirable for certain players until the developers intervene.
Which emote is it about? On June 19, 2019, the emote “Deep Dab” was added to the shop. It allows you to perform a so-called “Dab Move”, where your character extends one arm, bends the other arm and dips its head into it. The whole thing happens in a deep squat.
Why is the emote problematic? Some players quickly discovered that you can misuse the emote. Your character slides to the side when standing up from the squat. This results in a smooth sidestep along with the squat, from which your character suddenly rises.
If you combine this with a wall with a window, the character appears exactly in the window and can take down an opponent without them being able to foresee it.
If you had crawled under the window normally, at least they could have spotted you. With the Dab emote, however, this happens without warning and is clearly a nasty exploit.
Players wanted to exploit and are now angry
What happened to the emote? Because the emote grants an unfair advantage, many players wanted to have it and were happy to invest the necessary 200 V-Bucks (2 euros) into the animation.
However, buying things that grant gameplay advantages falls under pay-to-win. Therefore, Epic has now reacted about a month later and nerfed the emote.
The Deep Dab still works as usual. So you can still make the cheeky sidestep from the squat and suddenly pop up in a window.
However, those who want to pull the trigger confidently to take down the surprised opponent will be surprised.
Because Epic has built in a 1-second delay, preventing you from shooting immediately after the emote. This makes this gesture what it should have always been: a funny animation and not a nasty pay-to-win exploit.
How buyers of the emote are reacting: While players who always found the emote unfair are now satisfied, various players are venting their displeasure on Twitter, who had only bought the Deep Dab to cheat with it:
- “Now I’ve bought the Deep Dab for nothing!”
- “Now I’ve only bought the Deep Dab because of the exploit, and now they patched it!”
- “The Deep Dab had a really cool exploit, but it got nerfed. Deep Dab was too OP!”
- “I want my money back for the Deep Dab!”
- “You nerfed the Deep Dab! Give me my money back!”
- “Damn, I spent money on the Deep Dab!”
