Fortnite Battle Royale is based on the main game, which was rated 12 by the USK. The pedagogical recommendation of the Fachstelle für Jugendmedienkultur NRW is that Fortnite Battle Royale should be played from the age of 14 – but that is only an orientation guide for parents. The company is happy to engage in discussion about such recommendations, but asks for a “respectful and appropriate tone, which unfortunately had to be missed in the discussion about the TV report”. The consequence: “For this reason, we distance ourselves at this point from the context of the report “to warn parents” or “to sound the alarm”. However, parents can only do justice to their educational responsibility if they have access to a variety of information.”

The battle royale shooter Fortnite (buy now 19,99 € ) is currently surfing on a great wave of success and hype. Fortnite currently has over 45 million registered players (January 2018) and over 3.4 million simultaneous survival specialists on the servers. So it’s no wonder that this is now also attracting the attention of the TV media.

The channel ProSieben delivered a more than unobjective report in the March 13 edition of Newstime (minute 9:15), reminiscent of old killer game times. The report is not exactly squeamish about the online shooter Fortnite: It uses loaded phrases like “Only those who shoot others survive” and portrays Fortnite: Battle Royale as “wild carnage that takes youth by storm.”

The article is also factually more than full of holes in other respects. For example, it is claimed that the paid basic version would entice those aged 12 and up to unlock the “considerably more brutal” free and untested online offshoot. Fortnite connoisseurs would certainly want to contradict this.

In addition, according to the ProSieben report, youth protectors are also said to be sounding the alarm about Fortnite. However, the educator Linda Scholz, who is quoted in the report, distanced herself after the report aired and wrote about Twitter: “Sad how statements are inappropriately & wrongly taken out of context to create lurid scaremongering among parents, explanations?” At the same time, she delivered an objective, pedagogical counter-analysis to Fortnite in the form of an assessment of the Spielatgeber-NRW. There, it is formulated much more mildly:

“Even though Fortnite: Battle Royale features gun violence as the only way to resolve conflicts, it is a very fictional setting without detailed depictions of violence. The game is aimed at young people aged 14 and up, because despite the great distance to reality, it is a survival shooter, which deals with content unsuitable for younger children and can be too nerve-wracking for sensitive players. Older teens may classify the action as a fictional game.”