When the Fortnite Chapter 5 and Remix Finale event takes the stage in-game on November 30, it will feature a pack of four iconic musical artists: Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice, and Juice WRLD. Like previous in-game concerts, such as those starring Travis Scott and Ariana Grande, the event is likely to be a kaleidoscopic audiovisual roller coaster. Still, by including the late Juice WRLD, who passed away in 2019, this in-game concert will also be decidedly different from any before seen in Fortnite: It will be the first to use an artist’s likeness posthumously, something that Hollywood is also grappling with as of late.
GameSpot recently spoke to Nate Nanzer, Epic’s head of global partnerships, in a music-focused interview that hit on the developer-publisher’s decision to bring Juice WRLD to Fortnite. Nanzer told me Epic had long hoped to do something like this with the late artist and explained why the company feels now is the right time.
“It’s something that our players have been asking for for years and years and years, and we’ve wanted to do it, but we wanted to find the right moment,” Nanzer said. “We obviously want to do it in the most respectful way possible. We worked very closely with his mom and his label, and we were able to find the right moment where it felt right, around this event, and he has new music coming out, so all the stars kind of aligned around this moment.”
Nanzer mentioned that Juice WRLD himself was “a big Fortnite player,” and though the Epic executive didn’t say this, it stands to reason that Juice WRLD would want to be in the game if he could say so today. Still, even with the involvement of his family and his music label, for some, the inclusion of a deceased artist’s likeness in this manner may always cross a line. In the movie world, Robert Downey Jr. recently said he plans to sue anyone who tries to create an AI replica of his likeness, and that even if it were to occur after he has died, his “law firm will still be very active.” Events in 2012 surely predate many of Fortnite’s biggest fans, but the Juice WRLD concert also recalls the Tupac “hologram” that once performed at Coachella.
In the Fortnite world, I haven’t personally seen a lot of pushback to Juice WRLD’s involvement in next weekend’s event. Certainly, there have been some feelings of ethics-based squeamishness, but the prevailing sentiment on places like the game’s subreddit and popular Discord servers is one of excitement, perhaps owing to the often younger player pool in Fortnite. Whereas older players and onlookers may see this as a line being crossed, younger players who have spent years growing up within Fortnite may more quickly accept this as a marvel of modern technology, and they may be excited to finally have the Fortnite Juice WRLD event Nanzer says has been one of the community’s most requested.
“Our community loves his music. We have data [that shows he is] still extremely popular. And I would say, I can’t quantify this, but when I look at Reddit threads, or Discord chats, or Twitter threads, Juice WRLD comes up over and over and over again. I mean, people have made Juice WRLD concerts in Fortnite Creative and [Unreal Engine for Fortnite].”
Nanzer added that he feels fans of the late artist will come out of the event with positive feelings. “We’re hopeful. We know our players have been asking for it, so there’s a lot of pressure to really deliver it the right way. I think people are really gonna love what we have coming, like, I think it’s done in an awesome way. I think if you’re a Juice WRLD fan, you’re gonna feel good about it,” he said.
The debate over when it is or isn’t acceptable to use a deceased person’s likeness won’t end when Fortnite Chapter 5 does next weekend, but Nanzer told me the company wants “music to permeate everything in Fortnite,” which likely means this isn’t the last time Fortnite will court controversy, even unintentionally, as it strives to fulfill its vision of a multimedia metaverse. In fact, there are already rumors that a future Fortnite collaboration will revolve around XXXTentacion, a musical artist who was murdered in 2018 at the age of 20.
Fortnite is a tastemaker on a global scale. Much of the games industry over the past half-decade has been mired in chasing lucrative trends that Fortnite started or had massive success with. Once meant to be nothing more than a survival game, Fortnite is today an increasingly hard-to-define platform that doesn’t merely feature pop culture; it shapes it. As Epic continues down this path of making the ultimate everything experience, it’s inevitably molding what the future looks like, whether we’re ready to live there or not.