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Fortnite 'shadow stone': Season 6 update has biggest feature removed after players turn permanently invisible

Developers Epic also apologises for a bizarre animation of one character's breasts

Andrew Griffin
Friday 28 September 2018 08:15 BST
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Fortnite developers have had to pull the new season's biggest feature just hours after it was released.

When the new update arrived, players rushed to get their hands on the "shadow stone": an object that could make the players who held it invisible. It was the most central of the spooky new updates, which also include the ability to have pets and changes to the map.

But when they arrived in the game, players found that the invisibility wasn't necessarily temporary, as expected. Instead, there was a way of going invisible forever.

And other limitations on the invisibility – such as the fact that players weren't meant to be able to attack while invisible, or to run around – were lifted in a glitch, too. It had the effect of allowing some players to become incredibly powerful.

Now the objects have been removed from the game until they can be fixed again. “Due to an issue with Shadow Stones, we’re disabling them until we have a fix,” Epic wrote on Twitter.

The problem came when players got a shadow stone and then went down soon after. If one of their teammates revived them, they would come back into the game with the shadow stone's powers – and none of the restrictions.

But it wasn't the only issue with the shadow stones. Players could use them to get inside of places on the map that were supposed to be inaccessible, for instance.

It is not clear when the feature will return. The rest of the season 6 updates appear to still be in place as normal.

The issue came alongside another problem with season 6: a bizarre change that added detailed breast animations to a female character. Epic has since called that addition "unintended" and "embarrassing" and said that it would be removed from the game permanently.

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