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Following the recent complaints regarding the glider, Epic Games has stepped in to make some much needed changes.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding one of the Fortnite items as of late. The situation involves the Dragacorn glider, which has now been taken out of the competitive playlists by Epic Games. Following its release on April 3rd, the Dragacorn Glider proved to be a popular choice among competitive players, and would show up in the Fortnite item shop over the weeks that followed.

Why has the glider been banned?

If you have experienced the glider in the game yourself, or have managed to find some footage of its use, then you will be able to take a good guess as to why this has been taken out by Epic.

You will have noticed that it is indeed a rather overly powered glider due to its animation. Usually in a competitive game, when players are using launch pads to navigate through the map, they make themselves vulnerable to attack from the keen eyes of the enemy team, perhaps even more so when the game is starting to reach its climax. What the Dragacorn glider does however is it conjures up an almost sweeping kind of animation that effectively wriggles around the player, making them near impossible to hit compared to players using differing gliders.

How did Epic Games respond to this?

Last week, the situation came to a head when it was revealed by sources that the Dragacorn glider would indeed be replaced by a default glider when in the arena. This will have been a very favourable decision for competitive players, who will be glad that Epic Games have managed to showcase their awareness on the differences between casual and competitive modes.

This isn’t something that has always rang true, since Epic has previously wanted to offer casual players the same gameplay experience as those who would play competitive. With the eSports and streaming scene being so popular with Fortnite, you can see why Epic would want to give casual players the chance to play the game as the pros do. This however isn’t always the best method in the eyes of the more competitive players, who would want to avoid disadvantages such as this.

Will the glider be gone permanently?

Epic Games followed the alteration up with an announcement that they would be working on a fix to the animation, and that the default glider being the alternative would only be temporary. The tweet sent out read: “While we work on an animation fix, the Dragacorn Glider will temporarily appear as a default Glider in competitive playlists on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Mac. The animation fix will apply to all platforms and modes.”

The community update continued to confirm that those who have purchased the glider would receive a refund, and won’t have to worry about using a refund token. In the meantime, the team are working on a more permanent fix for the glider, which hopefully brings a bit more balance to the item.

What’s coming up in Fortnite?

The timing of these changes is important too, as we recently saw the start of the Fortnite Championship Series, which offers a prize pool of $2,000,000. The invitational for this Solo event began recently and is set to run over the course of the three weekends from last week.

The invites sent out by Epic saw the top 100 players from the PC, Console and Mobile Finals from Chapter two, Season two, as well as the Season X FNCS Finals and the Chapter two, Season one FNCS Finals. The competition will see players looking to prove their worth in Solo format, with a new scoring system and prizes being introduced every week. Those who manage to outperform the others will then be placed in the bigger prize pools.

So there you have it. If you were a fan of the Dragacorn Fortnite item, then you needn’t worry about its whereabouts. The fix required is one that is desperately needed to bring an element of fairness back to the game, and will be back in the Fortnite shop sometime soon we hope.

Have you used the Dragacorn glider before? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image: Reddit