Microsoft and Playground Games have removed two Forza Horizon 4 dance emotes in a new update. Today’s update pulled the Carlton and Floss emotes from the game. Similar dance emotes in Fortnite have brought several lawsuits to Epic Games, the game’s developer.
Today’s update was otherwise a ho-hum affair, with bug fixes and some game improvements. The avatar emotes’ removal was noted without an explanation from Playground Games. Both emotes share more than a striking resemblance to dances found in Fortnite—two of several in the battle royale game that now have lawsuits attached to them. The full patch notes can be found here.
Fortnite developer Epic Games was sued in December 2018 by Alfonso Ribeiro for using “the Carlton” dance without his consent. Ribeiro created the dance while acting in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as Carlton Banks in the early 1990s. Ribeiro also sued 2K Games for using the dance in NBA 2K19.
The “Floss” dance also brought a lawsuit against Epic Games in December. ‘Backpack Kid‘s mom filed a lawsuit against Epic and 2K Games (again for NBA 2K19) for using a dance created by ‘Backpack Kid’ without his consent. The story around that dance is more muddied, as Backpack Kid himself said he wasn’t bothered by Fortnite using his moves. He told TMZ he wanted some royalties, but that it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Two other dance–related lawsuits have been brought against Epic Games over the last few months. Those lawsuits are currently pending trials.
Forza Horizon 4 dance emotes included the two now-removed animations among a number of other emotes for player avatars to perform. These were seen after races ended and in other menu screens. Microsoft and Playground Games have not been sued for including the emotes in-game, although these removals are likely to get ahead of any such litigation. Microsoft has not commented on the removal of the dances from Forza Horizon 4.
