Fortnite Fans Are Obsessing Over Its New Pokémon-Like Sprite Creature Collecting

Fortnite fans are forking out real money on eBay for rare species of Sprite — the game’s cute new, Pokémon-like creatures that can be collected and traded.

Completed eBay listings show people have paid up to $100 for the promise of rare species being shared with them in-game. Hundreds of listings reveal players choosing to spend on the game’s most uncommon varieties — including the coveted Zero Point Sprite — and their various rarer special-colored variants.

Sprite collecting arrived in Fortnite last weekend as a key part of the battle royale game’s most recent season, which introduced extraction mechanics for the first time. The gameplay loop here sees players discovering creatures, levelling them up in power, then securing them for use in future games 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 forth), the act of collecting each type is compulsive, with a dedicated collection screen that’s a little like a Pokédex. The tension of finding and then extracting a rare variant is also palpable, especially as some are hugely difficult to find (such as that one featuring controversial streamer TheBurntPeanut).

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