No matter how many competitors pop up in the battle royale scene, the undisputed champion is still undeniably Fortnite. It's consistently one of the most popular games in the world and generates tons of traffic and streaming numbers, along with sweet, sweet revenue for Epic. Travis Scott throws concerts inside it and Christopher Nolan shows his movies in there. It's technically a legitimate part of the Star Wars canon for god's sake! Even when other, better games come out and gain a strong following it only ever leaves a dent in Fortnite's insanely massive audience.
However, even though it has a huge cult of teens and tweens who worship the game like it was some kind of dancing, John Wick-skinned god, fans have found some reason to lodge complaints about it from time to time. The special skins released for Fortnite's seasons are among some of the most coveted items on the internet. And there's one in particular that fans want, but they're not happy with the work they need to put in to get it.
All This For A Gold Banana?!
As Fortnite has grown it has given its players opportunities to earn skins without having to clandestinely acquire their parents' credit cards. Skins can be gained through challenges, events, and by earning copious amounts of experience points.
The Peely skins, in particular, have been extremely popular, to the point that even people unfamiliar with the game have probably seen this weird, dead-eyed banana enough to instantly associate it with Fortnite. Since its introduction, there have been other variations of the skin including the robotic P-1000, the skeletal Peely Bone, and the suave Agent Peely. Then, of course, there's the Golden Peely, a shiny gold-plated version of the banana outfit that fans have been salivating over. Unfortunately, that particular skin has become somewhat of a contentious topic for Fortnite players.
You see, it's not especially easy to earn the Golden Peely skin. A Reddit user by the name of zMuska helpfully crunched the numbers and determined what it would take to get this shiny, potassium-enriched costume. And if this infographic is correct, the amount of work necessary to obtain this skin is borderline insane:
To sum up what zMuska is saying here, getting your digital hands on the Golden Peely suit requires a jaw-dropping 29.5 million XP in order to go from level 1 all the way to level 350. And that's if you play every single day of the current season for a grand total of between 406 to 2032 hours depending on the mode!
The playtime required to get the skin without putting more money down is absolutely bonkers. Even if one was able to find all the XP coins, complete every challenge, win every game, and kill just about everyone they come into contact with it would still take even more effort to reach level 350. Epic is essentially asking fans to make Fortnite their fulltime job. Even with most of the game's players stuck inside during quarantine, there would likely still not be enough time in the day to unlock the Golden Peely.
Of course, it's not hard to figure out what Epic is doing. They're dangling the juicy carrot of the Golden Peely in front of impressionable young players in order to inspire them to make it their life's work to play Fortnite 19 hours a day just for the chance to do the running man dance as a gold banana. Either that, or they'll have to buy the first 100 levels of the battle pass just to have a shot in hell of getting the skin, and even that might not be enough.
This kind of activity is nothing new in these free to play games, but many fans feel insulted or disgusted about the way Epic is potentially exploiting its players. Granted, it's fairly easy for most people to simply not get the skin, play the game for fun, and go on living their lives without being encased in a gold-encrusted banana peel. But for children or people with impulse control issues, this does feel like Epic is trying their hardest to milk every last dime or second of time out of its players for a rather paltry reward.
No Banana Is Worth This Much Effort
The general consensus is that Fortnite demanding this kind of commitment from its fanbase is asinine. There are ways this could be adjusted, like perhaps increasing the amount of XP gained from challenges or boosts, decreasing the amount needed to level up, or just altering the XP system altogether. But in all honesty, it may be naive to expect any kind of change from Epic at this point. After all, this behavior has earned them billions upon billions of dollars, so why would they change now?
Hopefully, fans can simply continue playing the game with the sad acceptance that many will never get to do the electro shuffle as any form of golden fruit.