Epic Quietly Made An Important Change To Fortnite Reboot Vans

Epic doesn't provide Fortnite players with patch notes anymore, a decision that remains controversial among players. Because of this, it can take time for players to notice any changes made in the game, particularly ones that aren't readily noticeable. Case in point? Players are just now realizing that in the most recent game patch, Epic introduced a big change to its reboot vans.

The reboot van is, of course, the random vans located throughout the battle royale island that enables Fortnite players to grab their partner's card and 'reboot' them back into the game. The feature was introduced shortly after the launch of battle royale game Apex Legends, which arrived on the market with an option for grabbing players' banners and booting them back into the match.

Epic has certain restrictions on its reboot vans to prevent them from being abused -- they, for example, can only be used to reboot a player one time before that person is permanently dead. As well, a van must 'recharge' after a player uses it to reboot another player, meaning the van won't be usable for a couple of minutes. That has changed, sort of.

Players have noticed reboot vans now only take around one minute to recharge, making it much easier to bring players back from the dead. This is particularly important for Arena gameplay in which losing a teammate can make things much harder and, in the worst-case scenario, result in early elimination from the match.

The change arrived in the most recent Fortnite update, which also aimed to balance out this change with one disappointing adjustment: the reboot vans in the Fortilla and Authority POIs have been removed, meaning that while players won't have to wait so long to get their partner back, they now have fewer vans to utilize during a match.