To balance everything out in Fortnite, Epic Games had to vault some of its weapons while continue developing the game. Many players nowadays don’t even know that some of these gun existed.
Opposite to “introducing” new weapons/items to the game, “vaulting” a weapon is to pull it from current gameplay, it may still be in the game’s backend, waiting to be fixed by Epic Games. So the absence of those weapons could be permanent or temporary.
And here is the list of 7 vaulted Fortnite weapons.
Zapotron
- Vaulted date: September 29, 2017
Many of us didn’t even have chance to see Zapotron in-game. But for those who did, the gun should be very memorable.
Zapotron was the first gun to get vaulted in Fortnite Battle Royale. You could only find this gun from the Supply Drops. After two weeks since it introduction to Fortnite players, Zapotron got vaulted by Epic Games deeming it was not suitable for the game.
A rare footage of Zapotron
Submachine Gun
- Vaulted date: February 12, 2018
It used to be widely used to destroy structures and in close range combat when no shotgun could be found. But this prototype of SMG had to go and got replaced by modern SMGs.
Smoke Grenade
- Vaulted date: April 11, 2018
Smoke Grenade was introduced to Fortnite by the end of Season 1. It is used it to create a smoke screen in an area to mask their movement from enemies. But it didn’t seem to fit a game like Fortnite at all. And we all know what happened. The action taken by Epic Games – vaulting Smoke Grenade, received little to none resistance from the community.
Crossbow
- Vaulted date: May 1, 2018
Crossbow debuted in February, 2018. It was much anticipated at first but soon became stale due to the fact that it’s not so effective. Apart from its infinite ammo, Crossbow had nothing else special about it to offer.
Tactical Submachine Gun
- Vaulted date: June 27, 2018
After receiving tons of fixes (mostly buffs) in attempts to balance the game, finally Tactical Submachine Gun became the most popular weapon to counter builders in close range combat. But as soon as Season 5 started, Tactical Submachine Gun got “deleted” from the game without any forewarning and that enraged the whole Fortnite community.
However, soon after that, Epic Games brought in 2 completely new and impressive SMGs. So “SMG meta” or “Spray and Pray meta” never actually got out of the game as of that point.
Revolver
- Vaulted date: September 6, 2018
Maybe the only reason Epic Games could give their fans on why they removed Revolver from Fortnite is that the game already had so many hand guns. Among all pistols, Revolver was the slowest gun. It’s as slow as Hand Cannon but was inferior in terms of damage output.
Drum Gun
- Vaulted date: September 11, 2018
The latest gun of Fortnite to be vaulted was Drum Gun. By doing so Epic Games encountered a lot of resistance from Fortnite community but they chose not to explain why. Drum Gun had been a favorite gun since SMGs’ heavy nerfs.
But as we mentioned earlier, these vaulted guns might come back one day, like Guided Missile just did recently.
