Fortnite’s New Ninja Skin Goes Live Today, Here’s When And What It Means

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Credit: Epic Games

Ever since Fortnite first introduced Thanos the Mad Titan into its game world back in 2018, it was clear that Epic Games was eager to play with other brands. Since then, the game has become a near-endless succession of advertizments, covering everything from Borderlands to Nike, the NFL, Star Wars and Batman. The message seemed to be that anything could fit into the world of Fortnite so long as its models were smoothed out a little bit and the IP owner was cool with the character shooting people and doing weird dances. Ninja, however, is something different.

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins becomes the first influencer to have a Fortnite skin tonight when Epic Games kicks off its new “Icon” series. The Ninja skin will go live at 7:00 PM Eastern, along with a back bling, dual katana pickaxe and emote. We don’t have a price yet, but my guess is that it will be in line with other licensed skins.

We assume that Blevins will be getting a cut of the sales, though we don’t know how much. His will be the first skin in the series, but next up will be Loserfruit and TheGrefg. It’s a tricky balance for Fortnite to strike: it needs to make sure that any characters in the game are in line with its generally family-friendly image, despite the fact that any character will necessarily be shooting people with tactical shotguns.

I expect a whole lot more from both the Icon series and things like it. Fortnite continues to slowly move past being a battle royale game, or even any kind of game in particular. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has suggested that the game is moving from being a straightforward experience to something more like a platform, a process that arguably started with battle royale itself: from the beginning, Fortnite was designed for adaptability with the flexibility of Epic’s Unreal Engine, and Fortnite continues ot become a kind of user-friendly version of that professional tool.

Part of that platform is people, and it’s not going to be long before Fortnite is a world where Ninja stans can cosplay and go fight against Loserfruit stans. It feels like just the beginning.

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