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Fortnite’s New Season Debuts Without The Game’s Famous Cop Cars

   DailyWire.com
Fortnite
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Fortnite, the incredibly popular battle royale video game, debuted Chapter 2, Season 3 earlier this week with a brand new “Waterworld” style map leaving players forced to battle each other among familiar landmarks that are now islands, stranded in huge bodies of water.

But there are other changes, too. When the game re-opened for battle this week, it re-opened without its famous cop cars, leaving some players concerned that Fortnite creators have given in to growing national anti-police sentiment after the death of George Floyd, a black man who perished while in the custody of Minneapolis police.

“Fortnite’s map used to be littered with police cars, along with other vehicles like trucks, passenger cars, and ice cream trucks. Creative mode featured these vehicles as well, as part of sets of vehicle pre-fabs,” gaming review site Kotaku reported Friday. “While there are still some vehicles on the map after this week’s update, players—the staff of Kotaku included—haven’t been able to find any police cars on the battle royale island.”

Users on the Fortnite subreddit report that the cars occasionally appear in the game’s “creative mode,” but quickly transform into “a default car.”

There’s no clear message from Fortnite’s creators as to why the cop cars were removed, but a number of players speculate that Fortnite has responded to growing concerns over racism and police brutality which have led to massive, national protests and other, specific incidents of censorship.

Following George Floyd’s death, a number of police-centric television shows, like “COPS” and “LivePD” were pulled off the air and canceled, and some critics suggested that any show with a police theme — including children’s television programs like “Paw Patrol” — should be pulled from cable schedules, at least until they could be improved or the atmosphere became less heated.

Sensing a greater need for racial sensitivity, entertainment companies quickly moved to pull movies and television shows with questionable racial imagery, including the classic film, “Gone With the Wind,” which will return to HBO Max later this month with “context” provided by historical scholars. Quaker Oats pulled its Aunt Jemima brand from shelves, and even Eskimo Pies have now disappeared over concerns their name was “offensive.”

Other players suggested that the police cars could have become driveable, allowing players to attack and loot other players using law enforcement vehicles — something that could prove relatively problematic in the current political environment.

Most players, though, agreed the move has had a negative impact on the game, according to Kotaku: “Multiple players expressed frustration that the removal of police cars would affect their Creative maps and game modes. Others complained that politics and political statements have no place in Fortnite, while others disapproved of the perceived anti-cop message.”

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