The Fortnite Battle Royale community on Reddit erupted on Thursday evening when many users reported an unsettling prompt upon logging into the game, informing them that cosmetic items and/or V-Bucks had been revoked from their accounts. This was an unusual situation due to its widespread nature and the fact that some players had items, which they had owned for months, removed. Epic Games finally commented on the situation Friday morning, stating that the revocations were justified and that a specific bug on Xbox had previously prevented them from implementing these corrections.
This situation sparked dozens of Reddit discussions on Thursday evening and Friday morning before Epic publicly acknowledged what was happening. In these threads and tweet replies, there are still users claiming innocence or reporting the loss of items and currency legitimately purchased on other platforms like PlayStation or PC. Thus, it`s possible that this wave of enforcement measures has affected more players than intended.
Reasons for Revocation
There are several scenarios in which Epic may claw back purchased items or V-Bucks. The most obvious is when a user buys V-Bucks and then refunds the purchase through their credit card company or the platform holder. Items that might have been bought with these V-Bucks should be removed upon the chargeback, along with the V-Bucks themselves. Apparently, a bug caused some players to retain these V-Bucks even after they were refunded, and this is one of the issues Epic is now rectifying.
Other actions users reportedly took to incur Epic`s displeasure include buying an account loaded with V-Bucks to gift items to their main account, changing their Xbox region to exploit lower prices in other parts of the world, and purchasing V-Bucks cards from grey market sellers. Given that Epic seems to have taken enforcement action against many different people simultaneously for infractions committed over several months, numerous explanations are involved.
Fortnite`s FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)-based item shop makes this situation even more awkward, as it may be impossible for those who lost certain cosmetic items to simply repurchase them legitimately, since most items only appear in the shop for a few weeks per year.