Fortnite: Epic Games confirm investigation into phantom shot bug

Epic Games is now looking into an issue in Fortnite that causes fired bullets to seemingly go missing from the server.

The problem crops up with multiple weapons in the game but is most notable with shotguns, especially when it is the first fired weapon in an engagement.

A video by Reddit user ‘jzimoneaux’ posted on December 3, prominently shows the bug and its effects on the game.

The video shows two players engaged in a build battle and when the building ceases, jzimoneaux is tracking their enemy below.

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At the opportune moment, jzimoneaux jumps down with a pump shotgun in tow. Judging by the video, jzimoneaux would have landed a quick, accurate shot at close range to the head of their enemy.

Instead, the bug occurred and the first shot of the engagement went missing. This gave time for the other player to line up a shot while taking out his shotgun and landing a return shot for the kill.

Thankfully, the video’s thread featured a reply from Reddit user ‘JShredz,’ a Live Operations employee at Epic Games, who gave context and reassurance to readers.

“It appears that outbound (from you to a server) packets for a small group of specific Internet Service Providers are being dropped in certain scenarios, we’ve also seen it most often when a shotgun is the first shot of an engagement,” JShredz explained.

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The Epic employee said that an “active investigation” is underway at the studio and with working partners, but a fix has yet to be found.