Looking to spectate your friends or other players in Fortnite Battle Royale? Here’s how the process works:
Spectating other players is often as much fun as actually playing. After all, there’s a reason that streaming has become so big over the last few years.
But Fortnite doesn’t make it super clear as to how you can make use of the Spectate function in-game. With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about viewing live gameplay from friends or other players.
How to Spectate a Friend in Fortnite
- First, have your friend queue up and enter a game of Fortnite.
- When they’re in the pre-game lobby, get them to send you a party invite.
- Accept their invite and wait for them to drop into the game.
- Once they’re playing, wait around 30 seconds – 1 minute.
- After that, the Ready button will change to Watch
- Press Watch and you’ll be able to spectate your friend’s game!
Note: If Watch doesn’t appear, hitting Ready and then canceling your ready-up might help matters. We found that it took close to a minute after a player hit the ground before Fortnite made the Watch button available.
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How to Spectate Random Players in Fortnite
The only way to currently spectate random players in Fortnite is to hop into a match and get eliminated. You can do this by dropping to your death at the start of the game, or letting a player kill you.
Once you’ve done this, simply hit the Spectate button and you’ll see from the perspective of the player who got the credit for your kill.
You can then hit Next Player to see another user’s gameplay, and the camera will jump to any player who defeats the one you’re currently spectating
If you died to fall damage, you’ll instead get to see from a random player’s perspective.
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Why Was Fortnite’s Spectate Feature Removed?
Epic Games did not reveal why it removed Fortnite’s original Spectate feature, which used to be present as an option from the lobby. However, popular opinion determines that it was likely a way of deterring stream snipers that were spoiling the livestreaming experience.
Thanks to the Spectate feature, Fortnite fans could watch a streamer on a second monitor, or have their friends call out the livestreaming player’s position with no delay.
They could then use this knowledge to get the drop on streamers, ruining the experience for the player and their viewers.
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