The epic saga of Epic Games’s legal battles over Fortnite dance emotes continues as the mother of the player popularly known as Orange Shirt Kid has filed a suit against the studio seeking to have the Orange Justice dance removed from the game. This case is a bit unusual, however, compared to the lawsuits brought forward by rapper 2 Milly and actor Alfonso Ribeiro, as the Orange Shirt Kid originally submitted the Orange Justice dance — originally called The Random — directly to Epic as part of the studio’s Boogie Down contest, which called for players to submit their dances for a chance at being added to the game.
Although Orange Shirt Kid’s dance didn’t actually win the contest, it quickly gained popularity among the game’s community (and the internet at large), and a subsequent Change.org petition garnered 14,428 signatures, and the dance ultimately ended up in the game anyway. Now, however, Orange Shirt Kid’s mother, Rachel McCumbers, is accusing Epic of “copyright infringement, misappropriation of the dance move […] and unfairly profiting from Orange Shirt Kid’s creative expression and likeness without consent.” As with the other aforementioned lawsuits, there’s no telling how the ruling on this one will come down, but it’ll be interesting to see whether the dance’s Fortnite-targeted origins will set it apart from the others.
Oh, and in other Fortnite-related news, it looks like the previously removed glider re-deploy mechanic will be making its return in v7.20 today as an item that can be found as loot around the map. The re-deploy will otherwise function identically to its previous incarnation, except that each use will now consume one charge of the item, and once all the charges are used up, the item will disappear. Previously, the community seemed fairly split on the mechanic’s inclusion, but whether this new iteration will find more widespread acceptance remains to be seen.
Downtime for the v7.20 update has begun! Sneak over to the patch notes to peep at what’s new. https://t.co/rk95pMkUQJ
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) January 15, 2019
