Forza Horizon 4 Quietly Removes Popular Dance Emotes Amidst Lawsuits

In an interesting series of events, Microsoft has quietly removed two of the popular dance emotes from Forza Horizon 4 with a recent update. The developers behind Forza Horizon 4, Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios rolled out a new update for the game yesterday, which introduces new features while getting rid of the Floss and Carlton emotes, reports Polygon.

Emotes in games were made popular by Fortnite, and the developer of the game, Epic Games, is facing a couple of lawsuits for “stealing” the emotes. Both Floss and Carlton are wildly popular amongst kids, and as annoying as these dances are in real life, they have been a major factor leading to Fortnite’s success.

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So it’s no surprise that other games like Forza Horizon 4 are implementing similar ideas, with the title including other popular emotes like the Clown Dance, Chicken Dance, Best Mates, Drake’s Hotline Bling, etc., most of which are already on Fortnite.

Epic Games, however, has faced a bunch of lawsuits — one from Alfonso Ribeiro, who starred in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, creating the popular Carlton dance. The company is being sued by the Backpack Kid for the Floss dance, and rapper 2 Milly for the Milly Rock dance as well. Whether Epic Games will be fined remains to be seen, but let’s remember that not everyone is taking legal action against developers like Epic Games for “stealing” the dances. These emotes are just dances, and not every artist behind the dances seem to care much.

What’s going to happen to these lawsuits going forward remains a mystery, but Microsoft clearly doesn’t want to get involved here, and so removing the dances before any legal action is a pretty clever move from Microsoft.

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Conversation 6 comments

  • duncanator

    16 January, 2019 - 10:35 am

    <p>The "Carlton" dance is even called Fresh in Fortnite so yeah, no doubt they got it from him. Still, I'll be curious to see if he is legally entitled to get anything from a dance that is clearly attributed to his character.</p>

    • jaredthegeek

      Premium Member
      16 January, 2019 - 11:54 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#397274">In reply to duncanator:</a></em></blockquote><p>He's not as he already admitted to stealing the moves, one from Courtney Cox when she was in a Bruce Springsteen video.</p>

      • bsd107

        Premium Member
        16 January, 2019 - 10:44 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#397295">In reply to jaredthegeek:</a></em></blockquote><p>“Dancing in the Dark”!</p>

  • provision l-3

    16 January, 2019 - 2:50 pm

    <p>I think Microsoft might be overly cautious on this one. Neither Riberio or Horning (backpack kid) have trademarked their respective dances which makes the legal challenge an up hill battle. I believe Horning has since filed for a trademark but it hasn't been granted as of yet. </p>

  • SupaPete

    19 January, 2019 - 12:10 pm

    <p>Typical boring lame move by a giant company, why not be spineless over a non issue surely is the train of thought there.</p><p>Copyright/trademark law seperates between a proper choreography/dance and just a set of regular moves or too short sequences to be a proper dance.</p><p>As in games like fortnite etc just a small amount of moves are done, everyone claiming ownership of those will luckily have a tough time getting jack shit.</p><p>And i say luckily because mankind would be in quite a shitty place if random guys think they are clever and can protect the smallest amount of common body movements and then charge everyone for "using them".</p><p><br></p><p>This whole topic showed again one of the downsides of current internet "press/journalism":</p><p>It sells better (more ad clicks) when one exaggerates and crazes/hypes up a story. So what was done on most sites "reporting" on this topic was that they made videos showing people (dancers/actors/musicians) doing these moves, then emotes in games doing these moves and then big bold headlines game X is stealing move Y and making bajillions off it!!!</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>Without taking a second in most cases to consider: hey, yeah, sorry, but you can't own 1-2 body movements.</p><p>It is perfectly fine for games to have emotes which are such a short sequence that noone can protect/own them.</p><p>Nor should any human or company ever be allowed to own such a small amount of body movements.</p><p>And everyone who attempts that should be shamed over it.</p><p><br></p><p>Because if such things make it through everyone can get sued for doing common body movements.</p><p><br></p><p>Those who try to sue for this are both extremely dumb and also extremely short sighted, because if nonsense like this ever makes it through frequently, they themselves would get sued, too for pretty much every stage appearance they do where they mimic some movement previously done by some other dude.</p><p><br></p><p>Like, seriously, just all around very dumb attempts to cash in.</p><p><br></p>

  • newsworldlab

    17 March, 2019 - 7:47 am

    <p>Wow! Loved this <a href="https://www.newsworldlab.com/important-self-defense-tips-that-you-should-definitely-know/&quot; target="_blank">LET'S DANCE</a> Image… :p</p>

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