The allegations currently rolling out in court against musician David “D4vd” Anthony Burke could be considered a problem for anybody with eyes and a functioning conscience, given that—as reported by our colleagues over at Paste—they are incredibly, horrifically grim. But they may wind up being a more specific, if less philosophically dire, problem for Epic Games, the creator of massively successful online shooter Fortnite—which now has to answer some pretty pointed questions about what it’s going to do with the game’s long-time association with the singer-songwriter.
See, Burke—who’s now on trial for the murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who went missing when she was 14, and would have been 15 by the time her dismembered body was reportedly found in the trunk of a car registered in Burke’s name last year—actually got his start as a Fortnite content creator, creating original songs to play under videos of his gameplay. After his career began to take off in the early 2020s, the currently 21-year-old Burke continued his association with the game, whose creators sold emotes featuring D4vd music to their players, and even produced a video showing an animated version of the singer interacting with its characters. (The video, “Locked And Loaded,” is still, to the shock of many, posted on Fortnite‘s official YouTube channel.)
Per IGN, Epic has taken some steps to limit its connection to Burke, most notably by issuing an update today that took the two emotes that play D4vd songs and moved them to a “Confrontational Emotes” list that means users can only hear the music if they’ve opted in to hear emotes sometimes used by players trying to troll each other. (Epic has also carefully kept all of its D4vd content out of its rolling storefront in the months since Hernandez’s body was found, and given the option to manually refund the purchase to players who bought it previously.) But the emotes are still in the game, which feels honestly bizarre. Burke is, of course, innocent until proven guilty, but that’s not necessarily the sort of thing that gigantic tech companies’ PR wings care a whole lot about; Epic has issued a statement saying that it had heard “the concerns” from fans, and would begin making “a bunch of changes we’re rolling out over time,” but it remains unclear how it plans to extricate itself from this deeply unwanted association.
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