The past few weeks have seen the emergence of a powerful new force in American culture. Two of this country's greatest loves, videogames and lawsuits, have been combined, which has the developers of these games quaking in their boots, afraid to include what used to be innocuous dances lest they be sued by the mothers of 17-year-old Instagrammers.
It started with Fortnite, a game (partially) famous for its emotes, dances including the floss, the Carlton and orange justice/random, that players can use to taunt or celebrate in the game. Others, like Forza Horizon 4, followed suit. Now, though, Fortnite's developer, Epic Games, is being sued in relation to all three of the aforementioned dances. The argument of all three suits (which are all handled by the same law firm) can be summed up by a quote from the suit brought by the mother of the orange justice kid, otherwise known as Orange T-Shirt Kid: "defendants did not credit Orange Shirt Kid nor seek his consent to use, display, reproduce, sell or create a derivative work based upon Orange Shirt Kid's Random dance or likeness in Fortnite."
Hoping not to get sued, Microsoft has pulled both the floss and the Carlton from Forza Horizon 4 in the game's series 5 update. Watch all the emotes from Forza below: