There has been something brewing in Fortnite for close to a year now. Epic has decided it may not need to be as conservative as it’s been with Fortnite skins for all these years. Mainly, on the female side. Now, that has culminated in a series of shirtless/bikini skins for “Hot Bat Summer,” a promotion similar to one raking in cash for Marvel Rivals across the pond. The tweet reveal is one of the Fortnite’s most-liked posts ever.

This all started with Kim Kardashian’s skin last December, and we’ve seen more and more “proactive” Fortnite skins since then, from the likes of Magik to this new DC swimwear lineup. To be clear, in any other game these outfits would be pretty tame, but in the context of Fortnite , it’s certainly a policy change for its brand of being aimed at “kids” (though it is a T-for-Teen rated game, given you know, all the shooting).

It’s an especially noticeable change when you go back to last year, where Fortnite was putting bike shorts on Mortal Kombat’s Kitana or opaque tights on Sabrina Carpenter. There was a very clear avoidance of going “too far” by its self-imposed standards.

It is certainly no coincidence that this is happening at the same time as Marvel Rival s’ summer event. It has almost hilariously revealing skins, as has been its brand from the start. To its credit, it includes a whole host of speedo-wearing male skins as well. Rivals is hardly the first game to make summer skins to sell, but the juxtaposition against this (tame, but similar in theme) DC event with Fortnite is clear. Fortnite has also done swimwear skins for some of its own IP creations as well very recently.

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Both Rivals and Fortnite are T-rated, as simply the act of putting proactive outfits in a game is not going to raise it to an M. Well, rarely, at least. It would be a bit of a controversy if that happened with a totally bloodless Rivals , for instance. Less so with The First Descendant, which is rated M with its jiggle physics and hot tubs, though that also has more blood and strong language as well.

It is not like Fortnite had some change of heart and realized “censorship” was wrong. It is far more likely that this is about earnings, with skins like these destined to sell more than normal ones a lot of the time, something that, in this case, Epic and DC will enjoy. Fortnite has repeatedly said it’s spending more than it’s making and recently raised V-Buck prices as a result. One way of combating that? Making more attractive skins. And in this case, literally attractive.

The DC summer skins launch soon, alongside a promotional pair of skins from, what else, The Odyssey, a standard part of marketing any big film these days. We’ll see how many people are running around in matches in bikinis from here.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .