Fortnite secretly adds new Harpoon Gun

Epic didn’t tease the new weapon as they usually would, but instead just stuck it straight into the game for players to discover.

Keeping up with Fortnite Chapter 2 tradition, the developers have covertly added the Harpoon Gun into the Battle Royale loot pool. Usually new items are teased beforehand, tweeted about on release and included in the patch notes (What are they? I hear you ask).

Next Scheduled updates dates! (~ means it's that day or the next)

v11.01 Content Update -> ~22nd, October.
v11.10 -> ~29th, October.
v11.10 Content Update #1 -> ~5th, November.
v11.10 Content Update #2 -> ~12th, November.

— HYPEX - Fortnite Leaks & News (@HYPEX) October 15, 2019

A few weeks ago, a post from Fortnite leaker “Hypex” revealed the scheduled dates for upcoming updates, with one planned for today (11/05/2019). We are accustomed to having patches released on Tuesdays, but this change wasn’t announced by Epic.

Players have already stumbled upon this new piece of kit and tested it out. The Harpoon Gun, which was discovered in the game files after last weeks update, is kind of like a reverse Grappler. It deals 75 damage to enemies and will hook onto them and drag them towards you. So far, we have only seen rare variants of the item.

If we don’t hear anything from Epic Games soon, then this is a worrying sign that patch notes could truly be gone forever. The lack of patch notes has been a popular point of discussion since the beginning of the new chapter, but most fans thought that things would go back to normal after a couple of weeks.

A Reddit user in the r/FortniteCompetitive subreddit recently discovered that all patch notes have been removed from the official Fortnite site. If this strategy of keeping people in the dark persists, it could cause similar negative blowback from the community as previous incidents with the B.R.U.T.E.s and turbo building changes.

They clearly want us to hop in-game and discover new things for ourselves, but competitive and casual players alike want to know the stats and reasoning behind changes. Let’s hope to see a statement soon.