Glitches overshadow Fortnite World Cup

Week 6 of the Fortnite World Cup was due to culminate in its finals on Sunday, where another batch of players would earn their spot in the World Cup Finals. Sadly, this event was overshadowed by the discovery of a major glitch in the game following the recent v9.01 patch. This came after a whole element was removed from play just before the start of this week’s qualifiers due to an ongoing glitch. This has made this weeks Fortnite competitive play interesting for different reasons than the controversies of the last few weeks.

This latest glitch was discovered too late to actually patch it in time for the tournament. It involves hit boxes and an ability to exploit building in the game. Hitboxes are a really important part of any Esports game since they are vital to ensuring skilled players are rewarded for their accuracy, this makes such a big exploit a big problem for this round of qualifiers.

This specific glitch only effects brick triangles. While players are editing brick buildings, crouching behind the edit will make them impervious to damage. Even a direct headshot while editing this brick shape won’t result in any damage being dealt to the player. The glitch does work both ways, since players using the glitch are also unable to do any damage through this hitbox. This doesn’t make it any less problematic. Now that this glitch is widely known there is going to be huge potential in the finals of this week’s qualifiers for abuse.

Since building is such a major part of the game, such a big glitch is bound to occur over the course of the games. How will Epic handle this? Will players be compensated if they lost their spot at the World Cup because of this glitch? The uncertainty has cast a bit of a shadow over the weekends games.

The vehicles glitch

Alongside that recently discovered problem, Epic have already had to adjust the game specifically for this weekend’s round. A recent problem with vehicles caused them to become kind of unplayable, resulting in players becoming stuck in vehicles indefinitely. As this was obviously going to cause some pretty big problems in the weekend’s qualifiers, they were removed from the game entirely until a fix is found.

Due to an issue where players can become stuck in a vehicle and unable to exit, we will be disabling all vehicles in Arena Mode and the Fortnite World Cup Online Open through the weekend. — Fortnite (@FortniteGame) May 16, 2019

This is a better response than the triangle hitbox glitch, since the problem has at least been rectified. However, it isn’t a good situation for competitive players to be in. Vehicles have been a major part of some players’ strategies for some time, removing them from the game entirely will limit the options of some pro players during the game. As some players have already managed to qualify, it can seem unfair that some great players are unable to secure their spot since glitches have changed the nature of the game this weekend.

There is still some time left in the Fortnite World Cup for any players who have been effected by glitches to qualify in a hopefully fixed version of the game over the coming weeks. However, it casts a bit of a shadow over this stage of the tournament and raises some questions about the legitimacy of certain qualifiers.