It may seem kind of weird that it took until this month for Fortnite to get cars. The battle royale shooter has seen all sorts of vehicles in its lifespan, ranging from conventional picks like helicopters and motorboats to more oddball choices like shopping carts and gyrospheres armed with grapple plungers, yet the classic automobile was only added last week. Then again, maybe there’s a reason Epic Games took so long to add them, if the serious glitch that players are reporting is any indication.
For the most part, players have been enjoying being able to zoom around the map in the game’s new selection of cars, when they’re working as intended. Unfortunately, the cars have proven to be fairly glitchy, with players discovering all sorts of ways to mess with the game. They’ve found ways to make Fortnite’s cars fly, gain unlimited fuel for them, and use them to stack extra items into their inventory, to name a few of the glitches that have been found so far.
While it can be debated how game-breaking those are, this latest glitch definitely is. According to reports and footage making their way online, players are finding themselves falling through the map and instantly dying while driving. By all accounts, it almost seems to happen at random, but there do appear to be some common elements. Dexerto notes that most of the deaths so far involve the Whiplash and tend to happen at Pleasant Park (with one reported instance of it happening at Lazy Lake), usually with players running into terrain before falling through the map.
No one knows for sure why this happens, but since the Whiplash is the fastest car in Fortnite, it’s possible that, at least in some cases, players are moving too fast for the map to fully load around them, causing them to fall through the terrain before the collision detection can kick in. One clip in particular seems to support this, as it shows a player fall while the surrounding area’s textures are still loading in.
Whatever is causing this glitch, Epic Games confirmed on Reddit that it’s aware of it and looking into a fix. “If anyone is able to reproduce it, please immediately report it via the in-game Feedback button after encountering it,” wrote Community Coordinator “EpicBoaty.” Unfortunately, they didn’t offer any timeline for when a fix may arrive, so it remains to be seen how long Fortnite players are going to have to tread lightly when driving the Whiplash.
Fortnite is free-to-play on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions in development.
