Video Gamer is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices subject to change. Learn more
Epic is living up to its promise of not tolerating cheaters in its recently released free-to-play Battle Royale mode. According to two legal complaints spotted by TorrentFreak this week, the developer has filed two lawsuits accusing two people of using aimbots ‘with the deliberate intention of ruining the game for other players and players who watch streamers’.
The interesting thing about this lawsuit is not that the players are being sued for the act of cheating, but that they’re being subject to legal action as a result of copyright infringement. Epic has said that the defendants are infringing copyright by ‘injecting unauthorized computer code into the copyright protected code’. In short the two defendants, Brandon Broom and Charles Vraspir, have been accused of manipulating Fortnite’s code to create their aimbot software, so their actions are in violation of Fortnite’s End User License Agreement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Epic alleges that its software has been modified in order to gain an unfair advantage over other Fortnite players, and it’s being used in a malicious way ‘in a deliberate attempt to destroy the integrity of, and otherwise wreak havoc’.
According to one of the complaints filed by Epic, CharlesVraspir has been banned at least nine times already. He’s apparently been creating new accounts in order to continue his negative actions, so it seems he’s not getting the message. Each of the defendants is being sued for up to $150k in statutory damages for copyright infringement, and for causing ‘suffer, substantial and irreparable damage’ to Epic’s ‘business reputation.’ Ouch.
Fortnite is currently in early access on PS4, Xbox One and PC. Epic recently released a free Battle Royale mode addon that’s becoming quite popular.
