A former Fortnite developer has claimed it took “years of convincing” for Epic Games to add Ramadan skins to the game.
Fortnite announced the return of Lantern Fest for 2024, the third iteration of the event that marks the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, but with a significant change to the skins that’s been a long time coming.
Previous skins during Lantern Fests were masked or hooded, but for 2024, two outfits, which are part of the Radian Moon Set, depict Middle Eastern characters for the first time—something that should have happened a long time ago.
While Lantern Fest has become a staple in the annual events cycle for Fortnite, the Islamic community has been vastly underrepresented by skins. As far as I can see, this is the first time Fortnite has featured characters from that background, which is corroborated by comments from a former developer on social media.
Posting on X, formerly Twitter, Islam Ibrahim revealed the Lantern Fest skins were “the last thing they worked on before leaving Epic” and that it took “years of convincing” for Middle Eastern-inspired outfits to come alongside the Ramadan event.
Ibrahim highlighted the “importance” of including outfits with this background and added that the introduction of Ramadan events was also his “brain child.” Ibrahim is now the senior marketing manager at AIC for Nintendo.
It’s remarkable that it took Fortnite so long to add these skins alongside the Ramadan event, particularly given Epic Games has done almost every crossover you can imagine to bring in characters from Transformers, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, WWE, and much more.
Hopefully, the push from Ibrahim has opened Epic Games’ eyes to the importance of diversity in Fortnite’s characters, so we might see more skins from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds in the future.
