Epic Releases A Statement on Their Cheating Prevention

Cheating can be a massive problem in competitive games, especially one like Fortnite that is offering millions in prize money. Today, Epic released a statement on their attempts to eradicate cheaters from their game.

Cheating is always going to happen in a competitive game - especially when it's open to the public and especially with so much money on the line.

Cheating has been on the forefront of the competitive mindset throughout the World Cup Qualifiers but rose even further in the Fortnite zeitgeist with a recent video on the Fortnite pro player DubsFN. The video by HazThaGreat alleges that DubsFN has been using a soft aimbot to help him place 2nd in the World Cup Qualifiers.

Today, Epic Games put out a statement on their methodology and action from the recent qualifiers, stating that:

Our team continuously monitors competitive play in all regions and will take action against unfair play if necessary. After each tournament, all players (including the winners) are carefully vetted by multiple teams and analytical processes to verify fair play according to the rules of the tournament, the Fortnite Code of Conduct, and the Fortnite End User License Agreement.

Epic also detailed the actions they took after reviewing footage from the World Cup.

• 1163 accounts were banned from competitive play for 14 days for circumventing region locks and playing in multiple regions through the course of the tournament.

  • This includes 196 prize winners who will have their prizes forfeited for playing in multiple regions.

    • Disqualified players forfeiting their winnings will result in the tournament results shifting for prize considerations, but won't currently be reflected on the in-game leaderboard.

• 48 accounts were banned for account sharing for seven days.

  • This includes nine prize winners who will have their prizes forfeited for sharing accounts.

• Eight accounts were banned for teaming.

  • One winner will forfeit prizes for teaming.

• One account was banned permanently from Fortnite for using cheat software during the Semi Finals.

  • This account played for less than five minutes in the tournament before being banned.

• One account was given a 72 hour competitive ban for intentionally disconnecting to avoid giving points to another competitor.

  • This is currently a manual process based off of user reports, but we will be detecting this more widely in the future.

Teaming

Epic also touched on their new teaming detection algorithm that was brought to tournament and Arena games. This system can immediately ban players who are caught teaming in a competitive setting.

They stated that they plan to bring this system to all modes in the future. We'll have to wait and see how practical this will be.

Epic finished their blog post by requesting that players who experience a cheater contact the player support team.

You can view the full blog post here.

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