Fortnite Battle Royale Football Skins Are Missing A Lot Of The World Cup Kits

There’s two pastimes that are currently dominating the media, both specialty and mainstream: Fortnite Battle Royale, and football. One made its debut last October, while the other has been the most popular sport in the world for over a century. Epic Games announced the Fortnite World Cup 2019 last week, and the 2018 Russian World Cup has kicked off in the world of football this week. The audience for them both has a large amount of overlap, especially among teenage and young adult males in Europe.

All things considered, it makes sense that Epic would buy into the World Cup hype and release football player skins. There’s three full football pitches on the Fortnite map, and given how much money they make off microtransactions and selling cosmetics, it would be a missed opportunity from the North Carolina-based developer.

Checking the in-game store over the next day or so has eight different football players on offer: four male, four female, each with different hairstyles and skin colours. Once purchased, you can customise each outfit too. There’s 32 different football kits, representing 32 teams, the same number that are in the World Cup, however all is not as straightforward as it seems.

If you’re a football fan from the U.S.A (or soccer, as it’s known over there), you’ll be delighted to see a version of the USMNT kit in-game, despite the team not qualifying for the World Cup. The same goes for Canada, Norway, New Zealand, Turkey, Italy, Ireland, and The Netherlands. There’s also a Fortnite branded kit, predominantly purple with blue and green accents. By now, and of course from the title, many of you reading will have realised the issue. There’s 32 teams in the World Cup, and 32 kits in Fortnite, but not every team in the World Cup has a kit in-game. Some teams have been left out.

These aren’t exactly minor teams either. All the favourites for the tournament have been included, but there are some glaring omissions. Peru, the 11th best team in the world according to FIFA rankings, aren’t included. Croatia, who are apparently 20th out of 211 teams, aren’t in the game. Neither are Tunisia, 21st; Costa Rica, 23rd; Senegal, 27th; Serbia, 34th; Iran, 37th; Morocco, 41st; and Panama, 55th. Nine out of 32 teams aren’t included, almost 30% of the teams.

You may be thinking “so what?” These countries aren’t particularly large in terms of population, and there’s undoubtedly more Fortnite players in Canada or New Zealand than there is in Panama or Senegal, but to the players who are from those countries, the exclusion must hurt. According to PressTV, there’s approximately five million Iranians living abroad. Multiple sources say there’s over five million Moroccans that have left the country, many of which are based in Europe - undoubtedly the home to the best football clubs in the world. That’s on top of the 80+ million Iranians living in the country, the 35+ million in Morocco, etc. Fortnite has broken 125 million players, so it’s not too far fetched of an idea to suggest a large portion of those are from the countries left out by Epic.

Reddit user /u/Zakaben made a post to the Fortnite subreddit that has gained considerable traction. “I’m a Moroccan and all of my friends play Fortnite, but why isn’t there a Moroccan skin?” He began. “I was really excited when I saw ALL the other countries, they even added skins that did not win a place in the World Cup. All Moroccans are really happy that the Moroccan team is qualified, it's been 20 years! 1998 was the last time they had a chance at the world cup. No Moroccan skin is a no buy for me.” This is just one user who has taken the effort to post because of how disheartened he is by Epic’s exclusion of his nation. Imagine all the other players who haven’t spoken up or haven’t been heard, because their post didn’t gain traction, or they didn’t know where to speak up?

Perhaps the most insulting part of all this is how easy it would be for Epic to include these nations, and how bewildering it is that they didn’t. New skins come out multiple times a week, they churn them out every major patch, yet they’ve opted to alienate thousands within their player base by not including all of the countries in the World Cup? On top of all of that, some top teams in international football that didn’t make it into the World Cup have been excluded. As a Brit, Fortnite is immensely popular in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, yet none of them have been included either. Chile, the 9th best team in the world and the highest ranked nation to miss out on the World Cup, haven’t been included yet New Zealand, ranked 120th out of 211, have been?

Epic Games, I implore you to rethink this. If you’re going to try and be inclusive and provide skins for football-watching Fortnite players, you need to make sure it is just that: Inclusive. Picking and choosing the nations available in-game alienates those who weren’t selected, and creates bad blood between the players and yourselves if there’s no rational or communicated reason for their exclusion.

Either limit it to the teams in the World Cup, or set yourselves a rule. Only including the top 60 ranked FIFA teams for example, as the lowest in the tournament is Panama at 55. Or why not go for the top 100 teams, or all of the World Cup kits plus the top 10 Fortnite playing countries that aren’t in the World Cup? Hopefully we’ll see a post-skin update to include more nations, as the current roster makes very little sense at all.