Epic Games has chosen to pull the Travis Scott “Out West” dance emote from Fortnite. This follows the rapper’s Astroworld tragedy in Houston Texas, which has so far left eight dead and hundreds more injured.
Scott’s Astroworld is a music festival that kicked off on November 5 in NRG Park. On the first day of the event, a huge crowd surge to the front of the stage where Scott was performing - the only stage where anyone was performing at that time - led to a crush in which eight people were killed. CNN reports that one of the victims was as young as 14.
Scott, who organised Astroworld in addition to headlining it, was quickly criticised for the mayhem. It’s not clear whether the rap star was aware of what was happening in the crowd as he was performing. However, the event continued for nearly 30 minutes after a mass casualty declaration was made, and many attendees spoke of poor planning at the festival throughout the day.
One particularly distressing video currently doing the rounds on social media shows a young woman who was able to escape the crush and climb onto a camera operator’s platform. She screams that someone has died and begs for the show to be halted, though is seemingly ignored. Other videos show attendees towards the back of the crowd chanting “stop the show”.
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The second day of Astroworld was soon cancelled, and Scott released a statement saying he was "absolutely devastated" by what had happened.
Epic has not mentioned Scott or Astroworld by name, but the publisher recently disabled the Fortnite item shop’s Daily section, which regularly rotates in new gear and emotes. Scott’s emote would have been included in the latest update.
Fortnite’s Twitter support account later acknowledged that the section had been removed, and that it was intentional. It did not explain why.
Featured Image Credit: Epic GamesTopics: Fortnite
