Fortnite Has Removed Yoda and It's All Zoidberg's Fault

Epic has removed the Yoda Back Bling and several other Star Wars cosmetics from Fortnite. The move is a reaction to widespread reports of game crashes that are seemingly caused by some weird interaction between the Yoda Back Bling and Fortnite's Zoidberg Scuttle emote.

Zoidberg Scuttle originally launched via the FortniteFuturama set, which debuted in July 2023, while the Yoda Back Bling was released as part of the game's Star Wars Day celebrations in early May 2024. Shortly thereafter, many players started taking to social media to report that emoting Zoidberg Scuttle while having the Yoda Back Bling equipped crashes the game without fail.

Epic originally acknowledged those complaints on May 6, stating that it was investigating the issue. In a follow-up posted two days later, the company revealed it has disabled Fortnite's Yoda Back Bling in order to prevent crashes while it is working on developing and deploying a permanent fix. The item has also been removed from the in-game shop, together with the Dagobah Luke Outfit and Disassembled C -3PO Back Bling. The developer did not provide a timeline for when fans can expect the upcoming fix to be delivered.

Social media chatter surrounding this move suggests that fan reactions to the removal of Fortnite's Star Wars cosmetics are fairly polarizing; while some players praised the speediness of Epic's response, others wondered why the developer had to completely disable the Yoda Back Bling instead of simply doing something like preventing the use of the Zoidberg Scuttle emote when the problematic accessory is equipped. While the company did not elaborate on its decision, it is plausible that it chose this particular course of action because it wanted to immediately focus on fixing the underlying issue concerning the interaction between Zoidberg Scuttle and the Yoda Back Bling instead of putting out a band-aid solution that would ultimately require more work.

Some fans also appear to be unhappy with Epic's decision to pull