Mother Warns That Fortnite: Battle Royale Is Changing Her 10-Year-Old Son

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Heard of the game Fortnite?

 If you haven’t, it’s probably because you’re an adult with grown-up things to do.

But one Mother is now warning of the dangers of the game after she claimed it had changed her 10-year-old son.

Leo’s Mother was on British breakfast TV show This Morning telling the show hosts about how the PC/console sandbox survival game had changed her son and made him less social.

She explained that Fortnite made him start ignoring family time in favour of being sat in front of his XBox, with the game’s constant energy making him find normal life boring in comparison.

Sounds like most ten-year-olds?

“Before he’d go up for an hour to play Xbox then he’d come back down and join in with the family,” she said, explaining that she let him play it even though the game has a slightly older age rating. “But then Fortnite came along, it is 12s and Leo’s nearly 11, I’m not super strict.”

“It took a couple of weeks,” she said. “I’m strict with time, two hours Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I never had to enforce that with Fifa, but with this I’d go up at 7.45, and he’d be yelling he’s not ready.”

Leo’s predicament is not strange – according to Business Insider, Fortnite is so popular that after just 6 months, it was briefly the most-watched game on game-streaming platform Twitch. It’s currently second.

3.4 million people were reportedly playing the game at exactly the same time at one point in February.

The most popular version of the game, Fortnite: Battle Royale, is an alternative mode of Fortnite, a co-op sandbox survival game in which the players band together to survive in the wake of a worldwide storm (a cross between Minecraft and Left 4 Dead.)

Just like other battle royale games, in Fortnite: Battle Royale players battle inside the eye of a storm, a space which gets increasingly smaller as time passes, forcing the characters to move closer together rather than hide.

With matches hosting up to 100 players at a time, that’s a pretty packed space.

But the most addictive part of this game is the construction element. When players land on the island they carry nothing but a pick-axe, forcing them to mine materials and build traps and barriers themselves.

Anything players create on the map can be destroyed.

Apparently thinking that you’re safe, only to have someone blast through the ceiling you just built with a shotgun is the norm.

Viewers of This Morning didn’t seem too impressed by Leo’s Mothers parenting, suggesting that she didn’t take control of the situation properly.

“I can imagine worse things your son could be addicted to…” one said, suggesting heroine and cocaine. Yep, those would be pretty bad.

“Imagine thinking a game like Fortnite is endangering your child..if you think it’s really a problem maybe don’t let a kid play a game that has a certain age rating or you know.. be a parent and take control of the situation,” another added.