Fortnite previously released in-game items tied to David Anthony Burke, known as D4vd, who has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez after her remains were found in the trunk of a Tesla registered to him.
Since Fortnite sold cosmetics related to the musician in 2024 and 2025, Epic recently released a statement saying, “We hear the concerns. We have a bunch of changes we’re rolling out over time. The first one will be available on Tuesday, April 28th, when anyone who purchased one of these items will be able to get an immediate self-service refund. And, right now, players who request refunds for D4vd cosmetics via player support can be refunded.”
However, they don’t seem to be removing the cosmetics from the game entirely. As Forbes reported, “There is some pushback that the cosmetics, which include a dance emote and two jam tracks (he also had his own locker bundle), are not being removed from the game entirely, but this may be included in the ‘bunch of changes’ that are happening, with requested refunds being step one. It does seem a bit odd that it’s not just being flat-out removed and auto-refunded as step one, but that may happen soon enough.”
One commenter on Reddit, who spoke about the situation, said, “That's the dark side of crossovers. When you do an IP crossover, you can draw in fans of either IP. But when one IP has a fall from grace, both IPs suffer. Hard to imagine a crossover going worse than this.”
Another said, “I think it's really only a major problem when it's a crossover with a real person. For example, Iron Man is a fictional character, realistically there's nothing the character can be written to do in a comic or a movie that is going to necessitate removing him from something like Fortnite. Real people on the other hand can do all kinds of terrible things. If they just stuck to fictional characters they'd probably never have to remove anyone, although to be fair they've had a decent amount of real life pop culture people in the game and this is the only one I've heard of having to get removed for something horrible.”
