In what is undoubtedly going to become the week’s weirdest news story, Epic had to release an official word on a pretty crappy story that made the rounds on the internet the last days. Supposedly, an attendee of Gamescom was so eager to play Fortnite during the expo, that instead of leaving the waiting line he or she decided to defecate in a plastic bag. I know, pretty gross stuff.
Naturally, with Fortnite being arguably the most popular game at the moment in the world, once the story hit the web, it snowballed into such a big state that the developer of Fortnite had to chime in. Senior PR official Nick Chester slammed down the story in a tweet, citing that such a thing “did not happen”.
I can’t believe I need to tweet this, but this did not happen. https://t.co/P6n0hcatsM
— Nick Chester (@nickchester) August 24, 2018
It might seem weird that a professional company comments on such a weird and seemingly menial occurrence but being the Top Dog in gaming does not only bring financial success with it. Games like Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Doom all have experienced that being mega popular brings the risk of becoming a target for opponents of the gaming medium or aspects of it.
Eurogamer penned a fascinating article on this topic, by highlighting how Fortnite’s insane popularity led the game to become a mainstay in unserious tabloid journalism, fueling a warped narrative that gaming is dangerous and leads to asocial behavior. That isn’t entirely untrue but games are hardly to put the blame on. After all, tragic individual cases in connection with video games most often have deeper underlying psychological and social causes behind them. Tabloids usually don’t care about such things however and publish what brings sales and clicks.
It’s likely that Epic is wary of landing in a similar tough spot as the likes of GTA or Mortal Kombat, and thus is promptly extinguishing possible harmful PR early on.
It’s still a memorable story nonetheless, showing once again that just because someone wrote something on the internet, you shouldn’t believe it.
