Games as military recruitment tools aren’t entirely new to readers here, primarily in the case of the official US Army FPS series America’s Army, the latest iteration of which was sunset in 2022. However, efforts by the British Army to drive enlistment into service via a Fortnite game appear to have blown up in the military branch’s face.
The game itself, called Operation: Belong, was being promoted on the British Army’s official Twitter account, which was announcing a livestream this Wednesday that brought together two teams headed by a pair of YouTube influencers to duke it out on the custom map, all while a trailer showed Fortnite’s Jonesy and other characters firing weapons and taking on boot camp challenges.
The tweet roused some reportedly mixed reactions, particularly since Fortnite is usually played by a much younger audience than military recruitment would allow. In addition, Epic Games’ own Island Creator guidelines state that any commercial or sponsored content “must not promote enrollment in the military.”
Shortly afterward, the British Army Twitter account and those associated with the promotion deleted their posts, and it’s unclear if the promised livestream in question or the custom game map will go live as planned. Epic Games simply said in a statement that Operation: Belong “has not yet been published to Fortnite (ie. it is not accessible to players) and is undergoing moderation, as does all content in the Fortnite Ecosystem, and must adhere to our Content Guidelines and Creator Rules.”
