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Epic Games is suing a Fortnite user experience tester for publishing information on the Chapter 2 update and thereby breaking his non-disclosure agreement (via Polygon).
The lawsuit was filed on October 25 in a North Carolina court. Ronald Sykes – or @invisiblellama9 – is accused of leaking the updates coming to Fortnite before Chapter 2 was officially announced by Epic Games. He played the new Fortnite in September, and it is claimed by the lawsuit that he revealed a multitude of details through Twitter. He was able to confirm that players could swim, and he posted a map of the new world to be added to the game.
‘Sykes attempted to “give the game away” by leaking Epic’s secrets and spoiling the suspense that Epic had been working to generate and build for months in the run up to Fortnite Chapter 2,’ the lawsuit states. Not only did this violate the terms of his non-disclosure agreement with the developer, it voided the efforts of a ‘multidisciplinary team of hundreds of developers, designers, engineers, marketers, and other creative and business people who use art, science, imagination, skill, and hard work to create and continually improve the game.’
As such, Epic Games has requested the court for injunctive relief and maximum damages for Sykes’ neglect of his contract and “misappropriation’ of its trade secrets. ‘As a direct result of Sykes’ breach of his contractual obligations under his NDA, Epic has sustained and will continue to sustain damages in an amount to be determined,’ the lawsuit claims.
Season X of Fortnite ended with… the end. The entire game was dematerialised in a black hole event, and the Fortnite servers were offline for several days (also known as an eternity, if you ask a few of its most dedicated followers). It suddenly returned with a whole new world, an overhauled Battle Pass, new social features, and new deadly weapons.
Fortnite is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, and Android.
