Fortnite item gifting now live: Here's how to do it

It's been a long time coming, but today, Epic finally flipped the switch on item gifting in Fortnite. Once you've applied today's patch (which brings the game to version 6.31), you'll be able to buy items from Fortnite's shop and gift them to people on your friends list. Before you start doing that, though, there are a few important things you should know about item gifting in Fortnite.

The first is that this isn't a permanent feature just yet. Instead, this is more of a test run for item gifting that'll only last a week from the release of today's update. It also needs to pointed out that item gifting won't work on iOS as it goes against Apple's App Store policies, but beyond that, the feature should be available on every other platform.

Before you can start doling out gifts to your friends, you need to have multi-factor authentication enabled on your account. You can only send gifts to people who have been on your friends list for at least 48 hours, and you can only gift three items within a 24 hour time period, so choose your recipients wisely.

With those caveats out of the way, here's how you gift an item to a friend: simply head into the item shop, choose one of the items on offer, and then click the new "Buy as a Gift" button. You'll then be presented with a list of eligible recipients, and once you pick out a person to send your gift to, you'll even be able to add a customized message.

So, assuming you meet all the requirements for gifting within Fortnite, sending an item to a friend is a fairly straightforward process. Though this test will only last for a week, it sounds like we'll eventually see it added to the game permanently, so we'll be keeping an eye out for that. Look for item gifting as part of Fortnite's latest patch, which is live now.