Donald Faison, the actor who played the popular character, Turk, in the comedy series, Scrubs, recently spoke about having his dance stolen by the game Fortnite.
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Speaking at Vulture Festival 2018 on a reunion panel for the show, Faison was asked to do his famous Poison dance but declined, telling the crowd to play Fortnite instead because its creator, Epic Games, “jacked that shit”.
To be fair, Fortnite absolutely jacked that shit, which you can see in the comparison video below. They copied the dance frame by frame.
Scrubs creator, Bill Lawrence, told the audience that Epic did, in fact, reach out to him about using the dance but didn’t specify whether he or anyone else received royalties for its use in the game. Faison certainly didn’t get anything for it, going on to say that “somebody stole that shit, and it’s not mine no more”. Of course, this was all said in a pretty jovial way, given the crowd laughed after the fact. Lawrence even joked back.
“I knew that Donald would be cool with me getting the money for that,” he quipped.
The use of artist’s dances in Fortnite does raise an interesting debate, though, particularly when you consider that Epic Games charges gamers for these emotes through microtransactions. While old mate Faison has joked about his dance being jacked, other artists are not so keen on the idea of their work being sold on in digital form.
Considering we’ve yet to hear of any artist taking legal action on the matter, it seems like they’ve either received something for their contributions or simply do not have a leg to stand on.
