Epic Games Defends Fortnite’s Turbo Building Changes After Community Outcry

Fortnite studio Epic Games defended its decision today to change the way building works in Battle Royale after players demanded the change be reverted.

The 10.20 update for Fortnite went live early this morning with a Borderlands crossover, a new Shield Bubble item, and more. Buried in the patch notes contained one change: “Returned the time between subsequent Turbo Build placements from 0.005 seconds to 0.15.”

This meant that players could not immediately place another building piece after one had been destroyed, which is a tactic used when other players are focusing fire on one piece of cover.

The 0.15 value was used up to patch 4.30 before being changed to 0.005 seconds for faster building, so it has been reverted back to the game’s original building speed.

The patch notes explained the change was to “level the playing field regarding ping when it comes to turtling,” or staying in one spot.

Fortnite players took to the game’s subreddit and Twitter to comment on the new change with the hashtags #RevertTurboBuild trending worldwide and #RevertTurboBuilding trending in the United States today.

Epic Games released a blog post in the same day going more into depth about the turbo building changes.

The studio said the change was to address problems with the turbo building favoring players with low ping, favoring defenders by spamming pieces, and placement accuracy.

Epic Games acknowledged it does not want to change how responsive the building feels or certain strategies, such as “90s” and “waterfalls,” and outlined further changes focusing on rate of fire that will be live sometime in the future.

Fortnite: Battle Royale players have been very critical of Epic Games during the game’s Season 10 after introducing the two-person controlled BRUTE Mech into the game at the start of the season earlier this month.

The mech had the ability to destroy structures and players quickly with a high health meter and little items or abilities to counteract it successfully, causing players and streamers to call for extreme changes or removal.

While Epic Games defended the new feature by citing “players who had previously struggled with getting eliminations,” it did reduce the mech’s spawn rates and overall effectiveness in the following weeks since its introduction.