Summary
A new sidekick emote that was released recently is causing servers to freeze or lag heavily, leading to a huge loss of players. The emote in question is the laser pointer emote included with the “Fancy Ragdoll” sidekick.
If a player uses this sidekick emote in a UEFN map, it can sometimes cause the entire server to freeze or lag heavily (to the point where players start teleporting around due to heavy packet loss).
However, this seems to happen randomly and only in public games that have already started. I tried using this emote in private games, and it did not cause any lag, so this issue may take a few attempts to reproduce.
Please select what you are reporting on:
Unreal Editor for Fortnite
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
Stability
Steps to Reproduce
- If you have the Fancy Ragdoll sidekick with the laser pointer emote unlocked, load into any map with public matchmaking selected.
- Once loaded, if the game has already started (joined in progress) and there are at least 10–20 players, use the laser pointer emote on your sidekick.
- Watch your ping and other players. They may start to lag or freeze.
The exact conditions needed for this to happen are still unknown, so it may take a few attempts or different lobbies to reproduce the issue.
Expected Result
The sidekick emote should not cause anyone to freeze, and packet loss should remain low or at 0%.
Observed Result
Sometimes, the sidekick emote causes heavy packet loss, making all players lag or even freeze.
Platform(s)
Only tested on PC, but all players started lagging as a result, regardless of platform. Packet loss increased server wide.
Video
I posted a video about it here: Rams Videos on X: "HUGE FORTNITE BUG ‼️ The laser pointer emote included with the fancy ragdoll sidekick sometimes causes insane server lag and makes everyone freeze. Please fix this before it gets abused, especially in maps. @FNCreate @FortniteStatus @TimSweeneyEpic" / X
In the video, the server started lagging when I used the emote, causing everyone to freeze. When I stopped the emote, ping went back to normal almost instantly, and everyone was able to move and shoot again, as shown in the video.
