Fortnite is a game with a younger demographic, evidenced plainly when you take a look at the kind of merch that’s being sold for it, and its general family friendly nature. It’s violent, but in a cartoon-ish way that’s completely inoffensive.
What is offensive, though, is how many content creators seek to capitalise on the game’s younger, more impressionable fans with misleading and often just outright fake live events.
This has been a problem with Fortnite for a long time now, too many of the game’s fans being sucked into pre-recorded gameplay footage with a countdown for an event that will never happen. The most famous example is the now infamous “Kraken” event, which was magicked out of thin air by opportunists who wanted to quickly grow their following.
In Fortnite: Chapter 2, these people are still going and seemingly thriving.
These streams are almost never live and consist of an overly enthusiastic content creator screeching and screaming about something happening, all while beckoning their naive audience to smash like, hit subscribe; all of the clichés.
There are always promises in these fake event “streams”. Smash F to gain mod access, type something down in the chat to enter the giveaway, the list goes on. It’s all of the absolute worst streaming behaviours rolled into one, with the fact that it isn’t even live just the cherry on top.
I watched two of these “streams” for far longer than my brain should feasibly handle. Vorphy and GhosT Zombies put on quite the shows, pathetic and exploitative shows, but shows all the same.
I initially watched GhosT Zombies, who actually seemed harmless by the time I finished watching Vorphy. GhosT Zombies had a repeated countdown to the event, a clear lack of synchronisation between his pre-recorded footage and pre-recorded audio, and a constant barrage of requests for engagement from his audience.
Vorphy, meanwhile was on an entirely new level of shameless. He, along with his excessively squeaky friends, ranted and raved like a couple of caffeinated chihuahuas over the same looped gameplay footage.
The lies, oh, the lies. The lies told here would make Nixon blush, and the sincerity with which they were spewed bordered on disgusting. They would go up to one of the new hatches surrounding The Agency, pretend to hit it, and then play what was clearly an MP3 of bubbles.
There was also a radio tower that will bring back Tilted Towers according to leakers (it won’t, and they never said that they would), and yet again they play an MP3 of a siren going off to indicate that it was getting activated.
It wasn’t.
Continuing the trend of absolute nonsense, the trio also went to The Agency, hit the floor with the pickaxe, and the claimed that the POI had cracks in it and would collapse if the audience smashed like.
It really just keeps going, there’s so much more terrible stuff to unpack that I would be here forever. They flashed a “leaked map” of Season 3 for two seconds, kept going back to those damn bubbles, rambled on about energy levels, and showed no signs of slowing down.
Both of the content creators I watched tried to cover their backs by listing that it is “satire” down in the stream’s description. It’s a bit of a meme that nobody ever looks in the description on YouTube, and I’m certain few actually do. Where’s the disclaimer in the video itself, the title? Why does satire need to be a 24/7 engagement beg?
While this may seem harmless, it really isn’t. You are able to donate on YouTube streams, meaning that the game’s younger fans could be misled into donating for something like mod access, or even just a shout-out. It’s hard to do that, of course, when everything you do is pre-recorded.
The above shows someone having donated $99.99, which is just encouraging others to follow suit. I have questions about its authenticity, along with everything else in the stream — it may have been donated by a friend of theirs, it just seems suspect.
Maybe I’m just bitter with all of this. Our YouTube channel very rarely ever gets this kind of engagement, so maybe we just need to start lying constantly to children to get ahead in the YouTube game.
Regardless, this is something that either YouTube or Epic need to crack down on. It’s a bad look for everyone, Epic particularly if these career liars have SAC (support-a-creator) codes.
As for those responsible for doing this, be better.
Fortnite: Chapter 2 – Season 2 is free-to-play on PC via the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.
MORE FORTNITE:
– How Many People Play Fortnite?
– Fortnite: Where To Find The Gold Coin
–Â The Grotto Is The Best Landing Spot In Fortnite Season 2
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site.
