One thing I love about this job is learning something new about games I do not play. That includes learning that Fortnite has historically either obscured or omitted male nipples in its various skins. Until now, that is. Homer Simpson was the first man to free the nipple last month, and now new character Carter Wu is getting a skin that lets him bare it all.
As IGN lays out, Fortnite has featured several shirtless skins of both fictional characters and real-world figures, but each of them has either covered up their chest, like putting a pelt on Kratos from God of War, or just not rendering their nipples, like rapper Travis Scott or wrestler/actor John Cena.
This is odd, but not unheard of. Some anime or anime-inspired series like Free! or Persona do the same thing. However, after Homer and now Carter Wu have been added to Fortnite with nipples intact, it seems like Epic Games might have changed whatever internal rules it had about depicting male anatomy in the game.
Fortnite has thousands of skins, so I don’t think there’s a chance in Hell that Epic goes back and rectifies this for every shirtless man it’s ever rendered, but maybe this means that future skins won’t hide or remove male nipples moving forward.
In other Fortnite news, the crossover battle royale is the latest game to be caught in the generative AI witch hunt. This hasn’t been helped by Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney ranting and raving about how developers shouldn’t have to disclose the use of AI to create in-game assets.