The Renegade is a dance that took over Tik Tok and also NBA All-Star Weekend in the before times. And now it’s in Fortnite, perhaps marking a notable turning point in the battle royale title’s use of dances in the process.
On Friday, Fortnite‘s officially Twitter account announced that the Renegade dance would be added to the game as a purchasable emote. Importantly, Fortnite credited the dance’s creator, Jalaiah Harmon, on Twitter and showed a Fortnite character doing the dance in the tweet promoting the addition.
Go, go, go, go, let's go and bust out some 🔥 moves by @Jalaiah
The Renegade Emote is available now in the Item Shop now! pic.twitter.com/EeXtdcxubh
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) July 18, 2020
This dance getting added to Fortnite is much different than some of the other ones that have made it into the game. Crediting Harmon, first and foremost, is a significant step, as other dances invented by others haven’t initially been credited to their creators in the past. With the Renegade itself, that’s been a problem as well. The dance’s ubiquity on social media initially saw other more popular social media stars credited for and asked to perform it, including at NBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago before a social media outcry saw Harmon’s performance of the dance at the All-Star Game itself.
Copyrighted material in video games is still a field that’s getting sorted out in real time. In March, a judge dismissed a lawsuit involving tattoos in games like NBA 2K, specifically from the tattoo artist who designed works on players like LeBron James. Earlier lawsuits about dances in Fortnite saw Epic claim that you can’t own a dance. And despite the apparent legal agreement from the U.S. copyright office when it comes to dances like The Carlton, Fortnite apparently avoided any issues here and gave Hanson credit where it was most certainly due.