What is Siphon in Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 1? New Augment explained

Shotgun Striker, commonly called "Siphon," is the latest Reality Augment to get added to Fortnite Chapter 4, Season 1. It falls under the "combat" category of Reality Augments and is number 10 in the numeric order of things.

This is, or was, the first Reality Augment in-game that buffed up all shotguns indirectly. However, due to certain issues, its glory was short-lived, and things ended abruptly.

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The Shotgun Striker "Siphon" Reality Augment was broken on arrival in Fortnite Chapter 4, Season 1

Following the Fortnite update v23.20, Epic Games introduced five new Reality Augments. The Shotgun Striker was perhaps the most unique of the five introduced.

It features a "siphon" mechanic, which allows the user to regain health/shield points by inflicting damage on their opponents. In theory, this Reality Augment should have only worked when the user was shooting at an opponent.

Unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned. Soon after the downtime ended and the update v23.20 went live, players discovered that the Shotgun Striker Reality Augment was broken.

Instead of being able to "siphon" health/shield points by shooting at opponents, the Reality Augment can be activated by shooting at teammates. This gave players who had the Shotgun Striker a huge advantage over others.

It's unclear who discovered it first, but numerous professional players/content creators, such as Ship and NRG Aussie Antics, took to social media to report the issue.

Roughly a day after the update, the Shotgun Striker Reality Augment was disabled in-game. Epic Games tweeted out the same via their official account on Twitter. The announcement read:

"We've temporarily disabled the Shotgun Striker Augment due to an issue, however it can still be discovered. We'll provide another update once it has been re-enabled."

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When will the Shotgun Striker Reality Augment be added back to Fortnite?

As of today, January 27, 2023, Epic Games has no update. It's been nearly eight days since the Shotgun Striker Reality Augment was disabled. Considering two other Reality Augments, Aerialist and Party Time, were disabled on January 11 and 12, respectively (and remain disabled), fixing this may take some time.

On that note, another major update is just around the corner. Fortnite v23.30 is scheduled to go live on January 31, 2023. However, it's unlikely that Shotgun Striker Reality Augment will be re-enabled.

As seen on Epic Games' Trello Board for Fortnite, the issue has been marked as "In Development." Given that the problem was discovered after the last major update (v23.20), the developers have not had enough time to look into the problem and issue a fix during the upcoming update.

In all probability, the Shotgun Striker Reality Augment will be reinstated during the Fortnite update v23.40 or via a minor patch sometime in February. On a happier note, the Party Time Reality Augment has been marked as 'Fixed in Future Game Update."

It will likely return once the update v23.30 goes live this coming week. As for the Aerialist Reality Augment, no timeline will suggest when it will be re-enabled.