Fortnite developers Epic Games have confirmed they’ll be redeploying the ‘Peaceful Hips’ emote added to the battle royale as part of a crossover with superhero show Peacemaker, but with some modifications. This follows the dance being pulled from the game earlier this week, due to Epic’s concerns about “creative intentions” in the aftermath of a big plot twist in the TV show.
This is your spoiler warning if you don’t want to know about the Peacemaker twist in question. Right, so one of the show’s recent episodes sees protagonist Chris Smith, that’s Peacemaker, discover that an alternate dimension he’s been visiting is actually Earth-X, a version of Earth that exists in an alternate timeline which saw the Nazis win World War 2. Thus, America’s a fascist state, right down to the flag having a big swastika on it. Cue a controversy, as some poses in the dance of Fortnite’s ‘Peaceful Hips’ emote could suddenly be viewed as potentially resembling the shape of a swastika.
So, Epic opted to disable the emote while they talked to Warner Bros. in order to investigate the “creative intentions” of the emote. The result was Warner Bros saying they didn’t intend the dance to have any Nazi connotations.
“We’ve worked closely with our partners at Warner Bros. Games to confirm there were no creative intentions to connect the Peaceful Hips Emote and the current Peacemaker storyline,” a fresh tweet from Epic reads. “To avoid any confusion, we’re modifying the Emote choreography in next week’s update. If they prefer, players can return the Emote without using a ticket.”
It seems bizarre, given that the collaboration is so recent, that Epic wouldn’t have been given some kind of heads-up about this potentially controversial twist in Peacemaker’s latest season. While Warner Bros might not have anticipated that the twist would lead to such an issue for the game publisher, it’s a definite failure in communication. We’ll see if the situation leads to any changes in how Epic handles collaborations down the road.
