Earlier this summer, eagle-eyed players spotted a new addition to the menus in Fortnite Battle Royale: Gifting. If you enter the options menu then scroll all the way to the right, you can find the ‘Gifting’ subheading underneath Account Info and Unintentional Purchases, which is where you submit refund requests. Yet the only toggleable setting under ‘Gifting’ is ‘Can Receive Gifts From Others: Yes/No’.
That doesn’t help too much. So what actually is gifting and how do you do it? The short answer is… you can’t. It’s not in the game yet although it’s confirmed to be coming at some point by an Epic employee. “Gifting will be coming in the future. We don't have an exact date to share, but we will inform you once we do,” is the comment left by /u/MrPopoTFS on a Reddit thread about the addition.
When is it coming? Very soon, it seems. A Twitter account dedicated to posting Fortnite leaks and datamined files discovered in last week’s update some lines of code that are clearly relevant to the gifting system. “Hope you like this gift. Good luck; have fun!” is one line of text found that will likely be displayed to the giftee. “Sorry, you do not have enough currency to gift these items,” is another, this time for the gifter.
* LEAK * There's a lot going on in these photos but let me explain
— Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks (@FNBRLeaks) July 17, 2018
- The 1st photo is all the strings (text) within the Gifting files.
- The 2nd & 3rd photo shows all the called assets including a V-Buck icon (it may be the currency used while gifting)
- The 4th shows the files pic.twitter.com/vHTjL47IBi
There’s one notable line that says “Optional message up to 100 characters” so it sounds like players will also be able to leave customisable messages with their gifts. We expect plenty of “just build lol” and “git gud” will be sarcastically thrown around between friends.
It does sound like items cannot be gifted from the locker however and in order to send a gift to someone, you must purchase it from the in-game store. Got a pal that really wants Red Knight and you’re feeling generous? Unfortunately, you can’t lend him yours from your locker. You need to wait until it’s in the store again before purchasing it and sending it his way.
As these are new lines of code found in the files, it confirms Epic are still working on it and hopefully, we’ll be seeing the gifting system in Fortnite very soon. There’s no confirmed date but we’d expect it in the next week or two. Speaking of the Red Knight… guess who’s in the Fortnite store today? Check out the full shop here and take a look at FaZe Clan’s latest Fortnite pickup here.
(Header image courtesy of iTankid - YouTube.)
