Fortnite’s newest update, in a peculiar manner, delivered to gamers possessing UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) a set of outdated dev video files. These videos, showcasing the collaboration content of AOT and MHA among others, were discovered by data miner FireMonkey and shared online which immediately led to players speculating about the purpose of the videos, and whether this meant more content in the future.
Did you get what I mean when I said that every major update on Fortnite was like a treasure hunt for dataminers? Well, the new update has just come out and it is already a lot of fun, which was not supposed to be experienced by anyone. The tweet by the very famous leaker, FireMonkey, who is basically the community’s archaeological dig leader, talked about random development video files that got packed into the update. However, the catch is that the viewing is only possible if you have UEFN installed. It feels like a hidden level that only the map makers can access. The content of these videos was derived from different classic collaborations such as the Attack on Titan Thunder Spears and the My Hero Academia “One For All” smash. It is not only a great throwback trip but also very odd, right? Why are these old videos just lying around?
As expected, the tweet replies went wild. A user with the handle isaotintheshop went crazy about Thunder Spears and was posting all-caps hype about the possible “Wave 2” for the Attack on Titan collabo all over the internet. “THUNDER SPEARS THUNDER SPEARS WE ARE SO GETTING WAVE 2 OH MY,” they virtually screamed. That is basically the classic Fortnite player hope – encountering an old asset and instantaneously spinning an entire season’s worth of content dreams around it. Another player, JohnDaBot, directly addressed FireMonkey asking if this was a sign that Epic was going to dump UEFN with every anime gameplay item all at once, possibly even for some massive anime mashup season. Theories were proliferating like a Grapple Blade swing!
But not everyone was daydreaming about the future. There were some players that were just enjoying the view from behind the curtain. Ghodakiya_Ankur shared the sentiment saying, “Always fun seeing old collab content still sitting in the files.” That is absolutely correct! It is really coo that these digital ghosts of previous collaborations are just lingering in the game’s code, long after the item shop has completed its rotation. It is like rediscovering an old photo in a drawer you had forgotten about. Another user, salvahqs, was wishing if only players could see such types of behind-the-scenes videos when the collab ends. That is actually a brilliant idea – a sort of digital art book for your locker!
The conversation turned toward technical aspects, as it always does with these kinds of things. A player who goes by the name Joovainn took the opportunity to ask FireMonkey a totally unrelated yet very specific question about super level styles not working on some unlocked skins. Isn’t it fun how a leak about old videos almost immediately turns into tech support? At the same time, archer_fortnite, another prominent dataminer, was attempting to clarify for everyone that if the files could not be found using the popular tool FModel, then UEFN had to be installed. It is a complete ecosystem of discovery, dude.
Nevertheless, there were also the very sharp-eyed ones among the crowd. A user named 2018GamerSH pointed out that one of the videos was showing a “very early Chapter 5 map,” and he recalled a waterbending video that had a similar early layout. Franklin Trempl1 noticed that the Hatsune Miku “Miku Miku Beam” emote in the files was the old version in which the character’s arms were at its head rather than shooting forward. Who even sees that level of detail? That is simply nuts. This kind of thing is akin to forensic analysis of video games.
So, what do you think this implies? Are Epic Games, readying a huge plan, or has a developer just mistakenly copy-pasted the wrong folder before the update went live? What keeps it interesting is the randomness of it. Gamers are now speculating whether these weapons could move to the Creative mode or whether the Fracture live event could be recreated as a UEFN map. The community’s creative thinking has been ignited again with what was probably an accidental discovery, and it has been a while since even Fortnite’s digital scraps could give rise to weeks of speculation and excitement. Every time the game moves on players get the same thrill as when they turn back the clock, discover the left-behind clues, and speculate what will next based on the echoes of the past seasons. It is a cycle that continuously keeps the community engaged in an infinite way, and you can find more about it on PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
