Fortnite's giving out free rewards for the downtime but you don't have long to claim them

Doesn't matter if you were desperately pounding the 'join game' button for all of Fortnite's extended downtime or if you totally missed that it even happened, you're still entitled to Epic's make-good rewards. The developer confirmed that it had a little something in store for players as a way of making up for the service outage that lasted the better part of a day, but they won't be available for long.

The consolation prize for Fortnite Battle Royale players is the Rust Bucket, a matching back bling for the Rust Lord outfit. Nice to complete the getup - and set yourself apart from all the other players cosplaying as Guardians of the Galaxy's Star Lord. It should be free on all platforms now, just head over to the Store tab and look for the item that conspicuously costs 0 V-Bucks.

Where to find the free Rust Bucket back bling.

I don't think Star Lord usually ran around with a license plate hanging off of his back? But no shame in further delineating the character from his source material, I suppose. Fortnite: Save the World players haven't been forgotten either; Epic says you can check your loot tab to find a free Troll Stash Llama. That one hasn't shown up for me yet, but that might be because I haven't played much of Save the World yet. Yes, I'm one of those Fortnite players.

Epic didn't say when specifically these rewards will no longer be available for redemption, just that they'll all be here "this weekend". Update: Just got the in-game announcement - you have through 4/19 to claim your rewards! And while you're spending time in the world's favorite 100-people-trying-to-kill-each-other simulator, make sure you keep up with our Fortnite Battle Pass Challenges guide to earn those bonus Battle Stars.

Need to catch up? See what's new in Fortnite 3.5, including the Port-a-Fort and Replay Mode.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.