Players have noticed that Fortnite has recently decided to reduce certain restrictions that it’s had in place since release. The idea is that what Epic deemed potentially overly-provocative skins now have a lot more leeway. Even though Fortnite matches the T-for-Teen rating of say, the largely scantily clad cast of Marvel Rivals, it’s always been a purposeful decision to avoid that level of content ( mostly ). Now, that’s changed to a point where the ESRB actually had to update its rating for the game.

Many Fortnite players trace this trend back to the arrival of the Kim Kardashian skin in 2025, which featured more revealing clothing and curves than past skins. Now, that’s quickly multiplied across other Fortnite collaborations from Marvel to DC character to Epic’s own original, creations as well. While largely focused on female characters, it’s been a little more flexible on shirtless men as well. And even more recently, Fortnite has clearly added some amount of “jiggle physics” to certain parts of female skins’ anatomy. All of this is a far cry from putting Mortal Kombat’s Kitana in bike shorts not all that long ago. It’s a pretty sharp, noticeable policy reversal.

Now, however, the ESRB has added “suggestive themes” to Fortnite’s rating, and that seems to be based on a single skin:

“Players can encounter a female character depicted with deep inner cleavage and lower breast exposure.”

This is clearly referring to the summer version of a Poison Ivy skin, a collaboration with DC that also featured swimsuit-wearing Harley Quinn, Catwoman and a swim trunks-wearing Bruce Wayne (mask on and off). And it’s true that Poison Ivy can probably be considered the most revealing skin in the game at the moment (though all of these are still miles below Marvel Rivals and certain none are R-rated)

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Why is Fortnite doing this now? I think you could argue that it’s part of a broader trend in gaming right now where being overly conservative in games like this seems to be less and less important. You can see something at least a bit similar to this happening in Overwatch lately, though perhaps not to this same extent. I do think that this was in part driven by Marvel Rivals, who put their foot on the gas with these types character designs and skins from day one and has been very successful.

There is also the fact that Epic has been very up front about Fortnite losing money, which already resulted in an increase in V-buck prices. This was Tim Sweeney after a huge round of layoffs in March 2026:

"Today we’re laying off over 1000 Epic employees. I'm sorry we're here again. The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles puts us in a more stable place."

The idea here being that more provactive skins are more likely to sell, and in turn, possibly even increase overall engagement. But there is some pushback to this, given that Fortnite has long been branded a game “for kids.” Though others are quick to point out the game is rated Teen, 13+, with clear descriptors from the ESRB (which now include aforementioned suggestive themes).

This isn’t just a one-off case, there seem to be new skins like this introduced every other week or so, including in this season’s new battle pass (Lara Croft stand-in Grace Crowne is now going viral for these reasons). We will see where things go from here.

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