Huge Fortnite leak points to upcoming Ariana Grande concert
Plus new tie-ins and story details.
A revealing Fortnite leak has been doing the rounds over the past few days, with details on upcoming events, crossovers and spoilery story information.
The leak, which was originally shared with moderators of the /r/Fortniteleaks reddit, appears to come from someone with an intimate knowledge of Fortnite's upcoming plans, and who has leaked detail on multiple seasons in the past.
This new dump of information is the most eye-opening yet, however, with details on some of Fortnite's plans for the rest of this year and possibly next. And with today's new Fortnite patch, v17.20, the first element of the leak has already been spotted in the wild.
The headline from the leak is an Ariana Grande in-game concert, presumably similar to the hugely popular Travis Scott gig last year. The event is apparently in testing right now, suggesting a launch in the not-too distant future. We know Fortnite had at one point planned both Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga concerts in 2020 from court documents released as part of the Epic vs. Apple trial, and we've seen various other elements originally planned for 2020 (such as the LeBron skin) subsequently arrive in-game later than expected.
The leak continues with detail on other upcoming crossovers, such as more Justice League and Suicide Squad characters (likely to tie into the upcoming James Gunn film), and ongoing talks to secure the Naruto license for next season's battle pass.
Next, there's word on a Stranger Things crossover for next season where "something called 'The Sideways'" will "release monsters into the game". It's this point which has already been proven accurate, as dataminers have now found early reference to this in today's v17.20 update.
Finally, the leak details some spoilery Fortnite story details regarding the end of this season and the game's plans to completely refresh its map once again when Chapter 2 concludes. (Fortnite memorably waved farewell to its original island in its black hole event at the end of the game's Chapter 1.) If you want to read up on those, the link is above.
Fortnite is no stranger to leaks - such is the interest behind the game and the lengths fans will go to in order to datamine details about it. But this level of leak is unusual - and likely a headache for Epic Games until it is plugged. The leaker in question has been operating a while (one interesting detail is their previous leak that a character voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson would be introduced - something which happened but whose performer is still to be officially confirmed by Epic Games itself). This latest round of information is their most high-profile spill yet.
Epic Games did not respond when contacted by Eurogamer.