Epic Games Explains Why Fortnite’s SMG Is Being Vaulted

Epic Games has expanded on its decision to vault the SMG in Fortnite following an announcement that the item would be removed from the game’s weapon pool.

In a news post that was released on Friday, Epic Games revealed several plans for the future that included a 60 FPS update for consoles along with the SMG being vaulted. During that announcement, it was said that the SMG would become unavailable soon but may return at a later date.

“Next week we’ll be putting our first weapon (SMG) into the Vault,” the announcement read. “These weapons may or may not return and this allows us to manage the weapon pool as we introduce newer weapons.”

With this being the first weapon to be vaulted, Fortnite players had some questions about how the system works. Responding to some of these questions, the Fortnite Twitter account shared a tweet clarifying that all rarities of the normal SMG would be vaulted with a link to a Reddit comment where the process was explained further.

“As we add more weapons, consumables, and other item types we want to make sure that the balance of itemization isn’t ruined,” an Epic Games representative said on Reddit when asked if being vaulted meant the SMG was rotating out. “Expect more items to be released (and likewise vaulted!) in the future. And of course, items will often come back out of the Vault when the timing is right.”

Epic Games also added that both the Tactical SMG as well as the Suppressed SMG would still drop with only the normal SMG being vaulted at the moment.

In addition to the questions about the SMG and the vaulting process, some players have already expressed qualms with matchmaking balance tweaks, another idea that was briefly brought up in the initial post that laid out future plans. A brief section of this post mentioned that Epic Games was working on “changes to matchmaking that are aimed at creating matches with a more balanced distribution of skill.” While “skill-based” wasn’t explicitly used, that’s essentially what most players got out of the statement with some expressing disapproval of the change and in favor of keeping the game a more casual experience. Epic Games said that players’ feedback is being listened to, but more information on the topic hasn’t been released.