Rapper 2 Milly, who popularized the “Milly Rock” dance, is now suing Epic Games for the use of his dance moves as a Fornite emote.
Labeled “Swipe It” within the game, Fornite began selling the emote in July. The emote was available as an unlockable feature when players purchased the seasonal Battle Pass add-on.
The lawsuit comes after various celebrities called the game company out for appropriating and monetizing off of other people’s dance moves.
“Fortnite should put the actual rap songs behind the dances that make so much money as Emotes,” Chance the Rapper said in a tweet. “Black creatives created and popularized these dances but never monetized them. Imagine the money people are spending on these Emotes being shared with the artists that made them.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5-55wLSwN0
The lawsuit becomes tricky because there are copyright laws that protect choreography, but no specific laws that protect specific dance steps. Fornite’s procedures in coding the dance moves will also be a major factor in the lawsuit.
Fornite also uses dance moves from Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” video and BlocBoy JB’s “Shoot.”
2 Milly’s lawyer, who is also representing Lenwood ‘Skip’ Hamilton in another lawsuit against Epic games for using his likeness, said in a statement that the game company “cannot be allowed to continue to take what does not belong to it.”
Fortnite has hundreds of millions of users and brings in a massive amount of money. Since it hit the gaming world in 2017, it’s made over $1 billion.
