Fortnite Players Go Wild for New Pokémon-Style Sprite Collecting

Fortnite fans are spending real money on eBay to get their hands on rare Sprite creatures—the game's cute new collectibles that resemble Pokémon. Completed listings show players paying up to $100 for promises of rare species being shared in-game. Hundreds of listings reveal players splurging on the most uncommon varieties, including the coveted Zero Point Sprite and its rarer special-colored variants.

Sprite collecting launched in Fortnite last weekend as a key feature of the battle royale's latest season, which introduced extraction mechanics for the first time. The gameplay loop involves discovering creatures, leveling them up, and securing them for future matches at competitive extraction points. (And yes, you can steal them from other players.)

While each Sprite's gameplay effect is relatively minor—healing buffs, brief invisibility, and so on—the urge to collect every type is compulsive, with a dedicated collection screen reminiscent of a Pokédex. The tension of finding and extracting a rare variant is palpable, especially since some are extremely difficult to locate (like the one featuring controversial streamer TheBurntPeanut).

However, this difficulty is balanced by the fact that once extracted, infinite copies of a Sprite can be spawned using Sprite Dust, an in-game grind currency, and then shared with other players in matches. This has led to Sprite trading groups on Reddit and Discord—and those eBay listings.

To illustrate how rare some species are, Epic Games developer TofuChris revealed that Fortnite's millions-strong community has only managed to extract a single Gummy-colored variant of the rarest Zero Point Sprite since its arrival last Thursday. (Reports that an earlier player who obtained the Sprite was threatened with doxxing now appear incorrect.) That said, future items and events will likely make rare species easier to find over the season—and fans are certainly enjoying the hunt.

Fortnite's overall player count spiked above 2.5 million on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend—impressively higher than last week's new season launch—as the game hosted Sprite collecting events. Each week will bring more of these events, along with new species, which will inevitably appear on eBay shortly after.