Fortnite: Battle Royale players have long awaited a way to send items to each other, and that feature may soon become a reality. Several recent datamines suggest Fortnite is about to receive item gifting, which would let players share cosmetics with one another after purchasing from the Item Shop.
Adding item gifting in Fortnite would certainly change things up. Right now, players can only acquire skins three different ways: ranking up their Free Pass or Battle Pass, buying items from the Item Shop, or acquiring a cosmetic pack from a bundle, such as the Twitch Prime Packs, the Wingman Starter Pack, or the PlayStation Plus Packs. More often than not it means spending money inside the game.
But item gifting would let players trade cosmetics with one another or receive free presents. Imagine playing Secret Santa and sending outfit skins to your friends, or maybe purchasing that long-coveted Emote and gifting it to your best friend for their birthday. The possibilities are endless when it comes to item gifting.
Of course, item gifting isn’t an official feature in Fortnite: Battle Royale yet. Rather, datamines and leaks seem to suggest it’s on the way. Until it’s live, here’s everything we know about Fortnite’s supposed trading system.
Is item gifting coming?
Great question. We don’t know quite yet what Epic Games has in store, but there’s several clues floating around that suggest Fortnite: Battle Royale is about to receive item gifting.
In March 2018, Redditor maxt123456 revealed several Fortnite assets starting with the names “T_StoreGift” and “M_StoreGift,” all stored in a parent directory called “Gifting.” Opening one file showed a 3D model of a present with a bow wrapped onto it, suggesting gifts of some kind are coming to the game.
Then in June, the Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks Twitter account revealed that Epic added information to a file called “GiftingOptions.uexp.” These include strings for in-game UI messages, such as “Insufficient Funds,” “Sorry, you do not have enough currency to gift these items,” and the ability to leave an “optional message up to 100 characters” while sending a gift.
Then in mid-July 2018, Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks published more datamined information, this time showing additional messages pertaining to Fortnite’s upcoming item gifting feature. That leaks suggests item gifting is limited to certain accounts, that some items cannot be purchased as a gift, and that there are “daily gifts” of some kind available for players. In-game assets datamined from the Twitter account suggest that players need to use V-Bucks while gifting items, although it’s unclear how exactly.
Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks also tweeted that the Item Shop’s cosmetics “can be gifted to other players when gifting is released.”
Another datamined excerpt posted by Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks on July 18 also suggests that the Fortnite Item Shop’s API supports some sort of item gifting between players, even if the feature isn’t available to players quite yet.
Last but not least, Epic Games has seemingly teased that item gifting is coming to Fortnite. During Fortnite’s version 4.0 State of Development update from February 2018, the game’s development team said that players who are “feeling generous” will “have a feature on the horizon just for you” soon. At the very least, it seems obvious that item gifting in Fortnite is a matter of when, not if.
How does item gifting work?
We don’t officially know how Fortnite’s item gifting system works. But based on the datamined content shared from Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks and on Reddit, there’s a few hints floating around the internet.
For one, it seems likely that players will be able to purchase cosmetic items from the Item Shop and send a purchase over to another player after they check out. Item gifting will require players to own some form of in-game currency to send over gifts, which means players will probably need to pay a gifting fee in V-Bucks to send over items.
Datamined messages from Fortnite: Battle Royale Leaks suggest that not all cosmetics can be purchased as gifts for other players. However, players that purchase gifts can seemingly write a custom message, as long as it stays within 100 characters. Some form of user reporting will be available too, most likely to fight back against abuse with the item gifting system, like fraudsters or a secondary market.
Other than that, we don’t know if other trading or gifting features are planned for Fortnite: Battle Royale. But at the very least, it’s obvious that players will soon be able to send over items to their friends after buying them at the Item Shop.
