Epic Games May Be Bringing an 8-Year-Old Kid’s Skin Concept to Fortnite
Imagine for a moment that you’re an 8-year-old kid and you love Fortnite. You submit a design concept with no serious hopes that anything will come of it. And then you find out that the skin you came up with might actually make it to the game. Well—it may have happened to one lucky kid, in the form of the “Tender Defender.”
It All Started On Reddit
Around two months ago, u/tfoust10 on Reddit received a request from his 8-year-old son. His kid drew a picture of a skin he wanted the developers to add to Fortnite with the caption, “Dear Fortnite. Please add a skin in Fortnite called the Chicken Trooper.” He added parenthetically that he is “not good at drawing.”
For the last couple months my 8yr old has consistently asked me to submit this suggestion to Fortnite developers. So… There you go from FortNiteBR
The parent went ahead and posted the drawing on Reddit. Since then, it has received more than 40,000 upvotes and over a thousand comments.
That alone would be pretty awesome for any kid. But the story gets even better. Epic Games may have taken the request seriously.
Here is the Evidence We Have That the Skin is On Its Way to Fortnite
There are a few signs that we may actually get the Chicken Trooper in Fortnite. The first is a screenshot of the Lonely Lodge Watchtower. Scattered across the floor are a number of large feathers which could have come from a giant chicken.
Secondly, a couple intriguing finds cropped up during a datamine. The first is a skin named “Tender__Defender.” That certainly sounds like it could be a chicken. Secondly, the datamine found a Chicken glider as well.
Finally, there is this post and comment string on Reddit, which seem to confirm that Epic Games has been in talks with the parent about the rights.
Hopefully this will all pan out and the Chicken Trooper really is going to be added to Fortnite in the form of the “Tender Defender.” It is really inspiring to see a developer go out of its way to do something amazing for a child. What do you want to bet he grows up to become a game developer or goes into some other design field? If the skin gets added, we’ll let you know in our Fortnite news section.