Fortnite Players Cheat During Epic Sponsored Tournament | Gaming News

Epic Games has big plans for the Fortnite Battle Royale eSports scene, having announced that the first season of tournaments it holds for the game will offer $100 million in total prize funds. A major part of this is the Fall Skirmish tournament which has a prize fund of $10 million. The tournament officially kicked off on September 21, however, the event is already mired in controversy.

The first week of the Fall Skirmish tournament involved duos, with the particular team of NateHill and FunkBomb having been caught cheating. The cheating scandal began when FunkBomb was eliminated and opted to tune into the tournament’s official stream, which was being broadcast with no delay. FunkBomb then relayed information gleaned from the stream back to NateHill, calling out how much health DMO had. This constitutes cheating, and many Fortnite fans have called for the duo to be disqualified, while a minority have even called for FunkBomb to be permabanned from the game.

In a post on Reddit, NateHill addresses the controversy. The Fortnite player is keen to stress that they both “realize the impact this could have had on the integrity of the competition” and that FunkBomb “owns up to” the mistake he made and that it was “a mistake made by an otherwise great guy/player.” Furthermore, says NateHill, FunkBomb self-reported the incident to Epic Games before being called out. The Reddit post is an apology to the community, explains NateHill, and both players have apologized privately behind the scenes.

While most agree that FunkBomb is in the wrong, many are also saying that Epic is partly to blame. The developer is no stranger to hosting Fortnite eSports tournaments, nor is it a stranger to players cheating allegations within these events. Some say that Epic should know better and should do more in order to prevent things like this from happening.

For instance, during the Summer Skirmish event, one player was accused of cheating, and Epic conducted a full investigation. Following this investigation, it was highlighted that when technically possible, Epic asked that players stream with a 2-minute delay. If the developer understands the importance of delays, some may ask why didn’t the official Fall Skirmish stream have one?

Admittedly, cheating isn’t the only thing that Epic has to think about with these tournaments. Lag is also an issue with the Summer Skirmish being derailed because of technical issues. But with so much money at stake here, many have faith in the developer to run a tight ship both in terms of the game quality and the tournaments that it hosts.

Fortnite is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and iOS devices. An Android beta is also currently taking place.

Source: Reddit, Streamable