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Fortnite has been hit by a series of technical issues as it rolled out its much anticipated sixth season, including breast animations for one female character which developers later described as “embarrassing”.
The game’s latest update – which introduced new gameplay areas including a floating island as well as pets and more than 100 new cosmetic items – rolled out to players on Thursday.
However, bugs and other issues were quickly being reported, with the official Fortnite Twitter account firing off a series of tweets confirming it was looking into problems with the game crashing for Xbox players, to issues with transactions and in-game elements.
We're aware some players are receiving an error message when attempting to purchase Vbucks or their delivery is delayed.
We are investigating this now and are continuing to monitor for any additional issues.
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 27, 2018
We are investigating an increase in crashes on Xbox. We'll provide an update once we have more information.
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 27, 2018
Shadow Stones, the new consumable that enables players to temporarily turn invisible, also suffered from some teething problems.
Due to an issue with Shadow Stones, we’re disabling them until we have a fix.
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 27, 2018
The issues around virtual currency purchases and Xbox crashes have since been solved, but a further animation issue then threatened to overshadow the release.
First spotted by Fortnite streamer Agony, it highlights some excessive breast animations on the new Calamity avatar when the character dances – or emotes in Fortnite speak – in her default outfit skin.
The most important thing in the Season 6 update pic.twitter.com/FrnzFsF1Fl
— FaZe Agony (@Agony) September 27, 2018
Fortnite developer Epic Games told The Verge the animation was “unintended, embarrassing and it was careless for us to let this ship”, adding that it was working on a fix.
The company followed this up on Thursday night by tweeting that it was disabling some elements of its animation system as it tried to fix the problem.
We have disabled elements of our animation system. This means you may see visual issues with some outfits. Thank you for your patience while we work through these issues!
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 27, 2018
Then on Friday morning, it confirmed an update had been pushed out tackling many of the issues at once.
We have just pushed out an update containing fixes for item and animation issues. This will not require downtime.
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 28, 2018
It all marks an eventful first 24 hours or so for the latest season of the hugely popular last-player-standing game, which has gained more than 100 million players since launching its battle royale mode last year.
But the issues come at a bad time for the free-to-play game, with heavyweight shooter Call Of Duty launching its first battle royale mode when its next game, Black Ops 4, comes out in October.
