I feel infinitely sorry for anyone called Sarah, Mia, Silas, Jax or Elara

'cause any time someone reads those names now, it's gonna be very 'not sure if AI?'

There is clearly some shit going on, over at Epic:

https://x.com/FortniteStatus/status/2036451164347109440

(TL;DR twitter - #Fortnite Rocket racing and Ballistic are getting canned, one game mode of Fortnite Festival is getting shelved as well)

Combined with this:
www.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/comments/1s2nb6q/epic_has_fired_their_lead_environment_artist/

TL;DR - Epic dropped the lead #Fortnite Environment artist (island design, basically) who did the VERY popular Simpsons island, Sout Park collab, etc - AND (in the comments)... the lead writer for Save the World mode and Battle Royale (who apparently had been on the job for TEN YEARS)

Some folks are gonna say 'well, AI'

I... don't think this is the case.

I think this is some serious bloodletting, especially since they jacked the price of vbucks and dropped the amount paid out by Fortnite Crew, etc.

I think it's easy to point at current-age redundancies and say 'because AI', but... companies have been purging down a LOT over the last few years.

A friend of mine, in an engineering firm? Redundancies seem to now be YEARLY events. Just a constant 'actually, no, we don't need this many people'

(and every fucking SINGLE ONE has been followed by 'OH SHIT, get some of them back!' three weeks later)

Back on #Fortnite, tho - the 'battle' game mode of the Festival gameset was... silly.

I never saw it as an option come up (god, Fortnite's fucking map selection is a MESS, it's horrible, even to find any of the six maps I play regularly!) - but to try and say 'let's get four teams of four players to ALL play the same song!' is... not gonna happen.

No, no, you do not have the numbers for that.

Hell, I will say this out loud: Considering that the #Fortnite lobby screen claims tens of thousands of people are playing <game mode>, is it not WEIRD that I keep running into the same players, over and over?

Yeah, ok, you have 10k global, but there cannot just be 20 actual people playing on a Friday night in Australia.

(and 'surely there are other lobbies, though?' falls over if you have a five min. lobby time - TWELVE for ranked zero build)

Without a doubt, #Fortnite is like #Minecraft - a game that slugs right into the brain of a generation (a more recent one than mine, but sure).

The ones who did the Floss at their prom/graduation/whatever.

... and they come back to it, regularly, sure.

But I don't think they're playing it very much these days, no matter what Epic claims with those numbers on the map tiles.

>Can we all agree that If AI was removed from earth right now, we may get genuine news from X, no more brain rot, attention span would increase.

This fucker is 1000% in a fucking dreamland.

[HUGE disclaimer: no, this is not YOU, people I know]

There's 1000% a group of folks out there who've made 'hates AI, doesn't actually know anything about it' their entire fucking personality.