History Mysteries

GME craze reaches Fortnite with new Stonks Guy skin

By Eric Abent/

If you've been on the internet at all over the past couple of months, you've likely heard about the GameStop stock craze and have seen the Stonks Guy at one point another. Part crash test dummy and part stock market investor, the Stonks Guy has been virtually inescapable recently, and now it looks like he's coming to Fortnite. Apparently, April Fools has Epic in a very strange mood, as it has put a surprise Stonks Guy skin in the Fortnite shop.Fortnite's version of the Stonks Guy is named Diamond Hanz, apparently, and while this does seem like the perfect April Fools joke, the skin is actually live in the shop right now. For a mere 1,200 V-Bucks, you can make sure the GameStop meme lives on forever, even long after the stock stops making daily news.

While the Stonks Guy has been around for years, this skin's arrival is clearly a reference to the WallStreetBets subreddit and their GameStop buying spree earlier in the year. In very broad terms, the goal was to squeeze investors who had shorted GameStop's stock more than they should have, and the result was GameStop's stock price shooting up to prices far higher than many expected it to go.

GME's meteoric rise was made even more noteworthy by the fact that GameStop has been struggling in recent years – and that was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While GME started the year around $17 per share, the stock eventually peaked at just a hair under $350 in late January, and today not only does it remain at a high price – $194.50 at the time of this writing – but it also still seems to be fairly volatile. We also have WallStreetBets to thank for this skin's name, as users of the subreddit constantly said those holding GME stock should have "diamond hands" and refuse to sell even with that volatility and uncertainty.

So, if you're a fan of Stonks Guy, you can now live the meme in Fortnite. We're not sure how long the Diamond Hanz skin will be available, but we're guessing that because of its nature as an April Fools joke, it won't be around for too long.

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