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[Grinchy]

I'm in the camp that thinks if you start buying him skins to "solve the problem" all you'll be doing is teaching your son that the proper way to deal with peer pressure is to give in to it immediately.

 

[Tesseract]

~

 

[DonF]

1.- tell him to DAB on those haters /s
2.- skills is whats important, not the costume. You can get some skins. I havent payed a cent and have a couple skins.
3.- if all of those fails, then its the fun. You play to have fun.

don't give in to those dumb shit, this is a teaching moment.

 

[jshackles]

Kids suck. My kids used to take some flak for stuff like this when they were younger, but back then it was TF2 skins and hats. It definitely felt like the modern equivalent of having the fancy Air Jordan shoes or clothes and all the stupid shit that my parents probably thought was a waste of money when I was a pre-teen / young adult but for some reason I can't quite explain now I thought was life and death.

As a parent, you can guide your kids with your own moral compass but freedom of expression and building an individual identity at that age is super important too.

Nobody here can really give you the right answer that's going to fit 100% into your own situation. For me, when my kids went through this I sat them down and gave them additional household responsibilities and attached a small weekly allowance to that - and told them they could either get paid in cash or paid in Steam wallet credit. That had the added benefit of not totally locking them into buying TF2 hats with their money, since they could easily weigh that decision against the option of buying another game but I feel like that point still stands if you offer cash as an alternative. If buying Fortnite skins is important to you kid's social structure outside of the home, this gives them a way to do that while also teaching them the value of money. With my own kids what happened was the first few weeks they went straight to the Steam marketplace and picked out hats and gear for their favorite units, but after about two weeks of that they took on a more empowered attitude with their friends like "I don't need to buy that expensive hat to beat you in a match" and realized on their own that their skill would command them more respect. And this is TF2 we're talking about, the original "don't actually play the match, just fuck around" game.

Although my advice is a bit out of date, I hope this helps.

 

[CloudStrife_ca]

My 10 year old came home from school today telling me he felt bullied at school today.

I asked him why, and he said cuz the other kids were talking about Fortnite and he joined. They were all talking about the skins they play as said he just plays as default.

Apparently they all begin to taunt him and say default is for losers. Now it’s not his fault, I decided that we weren’t spending money on Free to Play games and refused to buy the battlepass for him or my daughter, and I super refuse to spend 20.00 on 1 skin, especially with how often Epic are adding them.

I don’t know what to do here, are skins that important that other kids won’t play with him unless he has a non default skin?

Your son should be teasing the other children for buying skins, its 2018, who pays for skins.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Your son should be teasing the other children for buying skins, its 2018, who pays for skins.

Isn't that what keeps hat simulator alive?

 

[Blam]

Honestly if your son can work for those skins and not just have you buy it and be done, and you reward him with things like that it would be positive for him. But really he can just unlock skins by playing so there's no point.

 

[Spheyr]

Man, I wish I had classmates who cared about online gaming at all in the late 90s, I'd have taken "arguing about everything" over "literally nobody cares about this at all"

 

[CloudStrife_ca]

Isn't that what keeps hat simulator alive?

you're not wrong but still.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Man, I wish I had classmates who cared about online gaming at all in the late 90s, I'd have taken "arguing about everything" over "literally nobody cares about this at all"

Reminds me of the PKMN phrase

When it first came out it was THE SHIT but then after a few years if you were still playing it at school you'd get called a nerd

FAST FORWARD TO CURRENT YEAR and you have all these normies playing the worst version of it on their phones.

 

[zwiggelbig]

Honestly, it doesn't sound like it's a money issue for you but a principled decision. You're not going to be able to stop kids being assholes but I dunno, it's like ?£?20 to stop your kid getting a shitty time? We'd all like to be moralistic here and I'm commenting from a position of having no kids at all so I concede my viewpoint won't hold as much strength as those with kids - but at the end of the day, the game is free and cosmetics are a big part of it.

I'd say it would be more sensible to let your kid earn the skins/season passes. Maybe good behaviour, doing jobs around the house (washing cars/gardening/painting), or incentivising physical activity as well. Limit them to one per month etc. Seems an easy win-win situation. Your kid will grow out of it in time.

I agree with this guy.. I got bullied alot in school and can totally understand that it can help your kid if he just gets a few skins and is part of the gang for a bit

 

[CrustyBritches]

Naturally, if you threw a tantrum for skins and finally got them you'd want to walk around school finding anybody who doesn't have paid skins like the new you. When you found them, you'd let them know just how cool it is to be like you, the god of skins.

 

[Kagey K]

Honestly if your son can work for those skins and not just have you buy it and be done, and you reward him with things like that it would be positive for him. But really he can just unlock skins by playing so there's no point.

See the thing is, I don’t really think he cares that much, and up until yesterday it’s never been an issue. He has money saved up from his birthday and Easter and could go buy an Eshop card if he wanted to, but he wants to save his money for Smash instead.

He knows that it’s up to him if he wants to use some of his funds for battlepass or whatever instead, but he seems rather indifferent about it.

I think he just wanted to vent or get it off his chest, and asked me if I thought FN was going to die like fidget spinners did (another thing he didn’t buy into and got a hard time for it.)

I guess I just posted this to get some community input and see if others were seeing similar issues. There has been some great feedback in this thread and I thank everyone who has participated in it. Hopefully when he comes home from school today it’ll be a non issue, but I’ll just have to wait and see.

 

[DreamsiclesPlz]

God fuck Fortnite. It's a fucking cancer.

 

[Spheyr]

Reminds me of the PKMN phrase

When it first came out it was THE SHIT but then after a few years if you were still playing it at school you'd get called a nerd

FAST FORWARD TO CURRENT YEAR and you have all these normies playing the worst version of it on their phones.

Nobody really cared about Pokemon when it came out where I'm from either. I was like the only one I knew with a Game Boy. Nobody cared about the TCG, nothing.

 

[kevm3]

Never picked up fortnite and don't plan to. $20.00 for one skin? Insane.

 

[Blam]

See the thing is, I don’t really think he cares that much, and up until yesterday it’s never been an issue. He has money saved up from his birthday and Easter and could go buy an Eshop card if he wanted to, but he wants to save his money for Smash instead.

He knows that it’s up to him if he wants to use some of his funds for battlepass or whatever instead, but he seems rather indifferent about it.

I think he just wanted to vent or get it off his chest, and asked me if I thought FN was going to die like fidget spinners did (another thing he didn’t buy into and got a hard time for it.)

I guess I just posted this to get some community input and see if others were seeing similar issues. There has been some great feedback in this thread and I thank everyone who has participated in it. Hopefully when he comes home from school today it’ll be a non issue, but I’ll just have to wait and see.

I'm happy to see that he does have some constraint in not buying into things. That's good, and yeah he most likely wanted to vent to you about it.

 

[prinz_valium]

Teach him to deal with it.

But you could also buy the PvE Version and earn Vbucks that way. But that would obviously still encurage this shitty behavior.

 

[BigBooper]

He could play it off by saying the skins are dumb and he's saving up to buy a new game. The ten year old mind is a confusing thing though, and you never know what might backfire on him. I'd say you're doing it right though because he can talk to you about his problems without either of you automatically just taking the easy out.

 

[888]

Sorry that your kid is having a hard time. Kids suck and fortnite is such a petty thing for them to bully him about. Maybe use this as a time to get him into some other games that will leave a better impression on him in the long run.

I’m glad my son doesn’t play fortnite, he is too busy winning are Rainbow Six and is neck deep in fallout.

 

[BadHand]

My 10-year old son played 2-3 seasons without microtransations and got the occasional "default skin" comment, but nothing that really bothered him that bad, he was desperate for some of the in game items but we resisted.

He ended up buying a battlepass with some birthday money this season (not because of bullying). I really don't like free-to-play games personally, but he gets so much enjoyment out of it I decided that $20 for some content was OK.

 

[Spukc]

https://offspring.lifehacker.com/how-to-play-fortnite-with-your-kids-1828171809

 

[Wolfgang Jr]

My 10 year old came home from school today telling me he felt bullied at school today.

I asked him why, and he said cuz the other kids were talking about Fortnite and he joined. They were all talking about the skins they play as said he just plays as default.

Apparently they all begin to taunt him and say default is for losers. Now it’s not his fault, I decided that we weren’t spending money on Free to Play games and refused to buy the battlepass for him or my daughter, and I super refuse to spend 20.00 on 1 skin, especially with how often Epic are adding them.

I don’t know what to do here, are skins that important that other kids won’t play with him unless he has a non default skin?

Step 1. It's your fault for him getting bullied - you've turning him into a feminine, anxiety prone video game playing meatsack instead of giving him a football/basketball and making him build some muscle and learn to control his body with confidence.

Step 2. Enroll him into a martial arts class - AND MAKE HIM GO EVEN WHEN HE STARTS CRYING ABOUT WANT TO PLAY VIDYA GAMES INSTEAD.

Step 3. Sign him up here (and probably yourself): gamequitters.com

Do this now before he grows up to be a complete pansy.

 

[JimmyJones]

Get your son into football or some sort of sport. People who play sports are always seen as Chads no matter the age.

 

[PSYGN]

 

[Kagero]

My 10 year old came home from school today telling me he felt bullied at school today.

I asked him why, and he said cuz the other kids were talking about Fortnite and he joined. They were all talking about the skins they play as said he just plays as default.

Apparently they all begin to taunt him and say default is for losers. Now it’s not his fault, I decided that we weren’t spending money on Free to Play games and refused to buy the battlepass for him or my daughter, and I super refuse to spend 20.00 on 1 skin, especially with how often Epic are adding them.

I don’t know what to do here, are skins that important that other kids won’t play with him unless he has a non default skin?

Not saying your boy is dishonest but this is a ploy I would have thought of to get my dad to buy me skins.

 

[WaterAstro]

This isn't anything particular about Fortnite. This is the typical wealth prejudism that everyone faces.

A kid could be bullied for not wearing name brand crap at school. Fortnite is just the popular thing now. I could imagine a kid being bullied because they don't have kombucha in their lunch box.

 

[demigod]

I buy my 5 year old stuff on his ipad every now and then. If I deem the stuff isn't worth buying, I put my foot down and tell him no even if he's gonna cry. Don't cater to your son even if he's being bullied. Tell him to ditch those friends and get better ones.

 

[Troubled Bat]

It’s a thing for some fucking reason. Twice at some point in Fortnite I had my teammates leave because I had no skin. As if having a skin equals to how good I am at the game... it’s ridiculous

 

[Nydus]

Not saying your boy is dishonest but this is a ploy I would have thought of to get my dad to buy me skins.

Had the same thing in mind. Working with kids in the age range 6-10 every day (almost 300 of them) and boy oh boy can they get creative with their parents

I have a friend with a teenage boy who is allowed to spend his pocket money on fortnite. It's also a good way if your kid is older. If he is 4th grade or lower, just speak to him to boost his confidence. He'll get over it