Dakotaz to stop spending money on Fortnite, receives support from competitive community

Some Fortnite players weren’t convinced by Epic Games’s explanation of why the overpowered giant robot B.R.U.T.E. is staying in the game. Apparently, Epic wants to use it to close the skill gap between players, and that’s not satisfying to a few competitive players and streamers.

Fortnite fourth most-watched streamer on Twitch, Brett “dakotaz” Hoffman, was one of the first players to respond to Epic. He said he’ll stop spending money on Fortnite until the B.R.U.T.E. is gone.

“You decide the direction of your game, I’ll decide the direction of my wallet”, he wrote.

Dakotaz received support from the Fortnite competitive community on Reddit, who praised him on a front-page post for taking a stand. While some commenters said they would follow his lead and stop buying Fortnite cosmetic items, others said they would instead take that money and support dakotaz on Twitch.

Other Fortnite streamers piled on. Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar replied to Fortnite’s official statement about the B.R.U.T.E. by tagging the official Overwatch Twitter account and writing, “I’m coming home, dad.” Tim also said a few days ago that he could stream Overwatch again if the B.R.U.T.E. stayed in the game.

“I love Fortnite but these choices with the mech boggle my mind,” Tim wrote in another tweet. “Hope that some balance is found soon… hard to enjoy the game at the moment.”

Though these are individual takes on the current Fortnite situation, they might start leading to a broader movement against Epic’s decisions. Last week, Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo made a successful Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds livestream instead of playing Fortnite due to the B.R.U.T.E. That was a few days after anonymous players suggested a boycott against Epic to instead play Apex Legends’ new solo mode.

Other streamers have yet to comment if they’ll change their streaming schedule to try to affect Epic Games and the Fortnite audience on Twitch.