Fortnite: Battle Royale’s material auto-switching stopped working yesterday, two days before week six of the World Cup Open Qualifiers.
Several competitive players have reported that their game wasn’t switching materials automatically when they ran out of the one they were using before. This is causing players to fail important plays, such as building down quickly through the “waterfall” method or just protecting themselves from opponents in small structures.
One of the most shared reports came from Fnatic player Derman “MOTOR” Ozdemir, who caught the bug in a video. “Here you can clearly see I went from brick to metal, but because I was out of brick it stopped building for a second which caused my death,” MOTOR said.
Other players have complained on the Fortnite competitive subreddit, where one post got the most attention and a reply from Epic Games. Fortnite’s design lead Eric Williamson said that his team got “a few” reports of the issue, and he “wanted to acknowledge that we’re looking into it.” He refrained from commenting on what’s causing the issue, if buildings will always behave like that, and if a fix is coming in time for this weekend’s Fortnite World Cup Duos Qualifiers.
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins was apparently another victim of this bug, even though he didn’t realize at the time. He was playing a duos match with Malachi “Reverse2k” Greiner when he tried to build down with 30 bricks available. When he built three brick walls, his game failed to build stairs automatically and he fell to his death, losing the match.
Professional players might now be wondering about what MOTOR tweeted earlier: “Imagine something like this in the World Cup.”
