Epic is under scrutiny again as rapper 2 Milly speaks out about how his signature dance move was stolen/added to Fortnite without his consent.
In season 5 of Fortnite, they added a new emote called Swipe It. Interestingly, this dance bears a strong resemblance to a move called the Milly Rock, seen in the music video of a song with the same name. The song and dance were created by rapper 2 Milly. After hearing about the stolen dance move, Milly spoke to CBS news about how he’s wanting to get proper recognition.
“Everybody was just like, ‘Yo, your dance is in the game. They actually sell that particular move. It’s for purchase. That’s when I really was like … oh nah, this can’t go on too long.
. . .
I don’t even want to bash them for all the millions. Know what I am saying? It’s not really like that. I just feel like I have to protect what’s mine.”
Milly has been trying to contact Epic about the issue. If not for compensation, then he wants to at least “put the actual rap songs behind the dances that make so much money as Emotes.”
This has brought into question how one protects a dance move as an intellectual property. the US Copyright Office considered dance moves a form of creative expression, and won’t accept copyright patents for them. So you can’t protect choreographic works the same way as music or lyrics.
Epic has a history with dance emote drama. One was regarding a dance-off contest they held. A more recent event was regarding the implementation of “jiggle physics” to the boobs of female characters with certain dances.
Epic has not commented on the situation at this time.