There’s really no gentle way to ease you into this situation so I’ll just be blunt: Yoda got removed from Fortnite because an emote inspired by Zoidberg from Futurama was turning the little Jedi master into a nasty monster that crashed people’s games. What a world we live in?
In case you missed it, last week Fortnite launched its massive Star Wars Day event. It added new Star Wars character skins, accessories, and even the catchy Cantina band song to the game’s Fortnite Festival mode. One of these new Star Wars-themed cosmetic items was a Yoda backpack that players could buy and wear as any character as they ran around Fortnite killing Goku and Ariana Grande. But, as documented online and confirmed by Epic Games, if you tried to do a specific emote while he was on your back, you’d trigger a game-breaking bug.
On May 7, iFireMonkey, a popular Fortnite news and leaks account, reported that players with the Yoda backpack were encountering a strange bug that turned the Jedi Master into a noodle-y monster before crashing the game. You can see the game-breaking glitch in action in the video below.
Epic was seemingly aware of the problem on May 6 and the next day, officially announced that it was removing the Yoda backpack (along with some other Star Wars cosmetics) from the game due to the bug.
“Due to an issue that may have been causing crashes for some players, we’ve temporarily disabled the Yoda Back Bling while the team is working on a fix,” tweeted the Fortnite Status account.
I’m honestly surprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often in Fortnite as it continues to add more and more content to the game. It makes sense that at some point some weird combination of licensed content could lead to unforeseen bugs and problems. The dangers of creating a metaverse, I guess.
No word on when to expect Yoda to return to Fortnite. As someone who bought the Yoda backpack, I’m very sad he’s gone. I loved how he would giggle as I murdered other players and picked up new guns. I need my giggling green boy back, Epic. Please, fix this glitch and return Yoda to Fortnite.
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