Despite Fortnite remaining popular, though, Respawn’s new battle royale game, Apex Legends, has made a compelling bid to eclipse that popularity in less than a month.
One aspect of Apex Legends that has attracted a fair bit of attention is its ping system, a feature that works similarly to voice chat, only without the voices.
Many players with anxiety disorders or those that just wish for a less stressful experience overall, can use the ping wheel to still interact with their teammates. And it seems that feature is coming to Fortnite in its latest update.
After downloading the Season 8 update, players get access to the ping wheel to mark points of interest or communicate danger to other team members.
PC players can press the middle mouse button; those on Xbox One simply press left bumper; those on PS4 press L1; and those on Switch press “L” to designate a specific area as one of interest for teammates.
Doing this once will just ping the selected area, item, weapon, or whatever it might be, while double tapping creates a red ping that indicates an enemy is nearby.
Whether Epic Games is intentionally trying to imitate Respawn’s ideas or the update was planned is unknown. Some believe Epic was trying to preempt Respawn’s continued rising popularity by offering Season 8’s pass for free to certain players.
It is also worth noting this isn’t the first time Epic has been accused of mimicry. However, many consider such imitation to be par for the course in the gaming industry or any creative industry; where Fortnite imitated PUBG, PUBG imitated several earlier games.
Fortnite’s Season 8 is available for download now. Apex Legends can be played for free through EA’s Origin.
