If early interest in a beta program is any indication, Fortnite Battle Royale on iOS and Android could be the biggest game in the mobile world since Pokémon GO. For right now, we're in the testing phase: sign-ups began on Monday for an invite-only pilot program on iOS, with more invites going out in multiple waves leading up to launch. Right now, fans are waiting for word from developer Epic Games: on Monday Epic said that invites and codes would be coming "later in the week," so it should be any day now. Just don't believe the fakes.
As with anything popular, there seems to be an epidemic of scams and fakes exploding across social media. The crux of the scams is that Epic will be sending out extra codes to anyone who gets an invite, meaning that people might credibly have extra codes to give away. That means that Twitter is flooded with people claiming to have those extras -- I won't link here. Most appear to be fairly innocuous and are just asking for likes and retweets, but some might ask you to initiate a download -- none are real.
Yesterday, Epic said that it still had not sent out any invites, and it has yet to update that across any channels. The developer likened these scams to the "Free V-Bucks" Tweets that dot the replies to every official announcement:
We have not sent out any mobile invites yet.
Please be aware of false mobile download links. Our official URLs are https://t.co/2e5rxQV3Uo and https://t.co/aYRtzUpFpO. https://t.co/XzyfhrO2w8
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) March 13, 2018
Watch here and on the Fortnite Twitter for official confirmation of when invites actually do go out: the Fortnite BR subreddit also regularly gets comments from Epic Games representatives and could also be a channel for official confirmation. In any instance, we're talking about a gap period of a day or two, so it's best to be patient and to remember that this is just a testing phase. It's fun to see the game working on a phone before anyone else, but it's not essential.
I'd imagine that the fakes will spur Epic to go out of its way to make absolutely clear when legitimate invites go out, but when that happens there will likely be some code giveaways from people with extras. Exercise caution when that happens: it's better to wait a few weeks for a code than to get sucked into a phishing scam from a shady Twitter account.
