Epic Games revealed some statistics about cheating in last weekend’s Fortnite World Cup opens today, including actions taken against over 1,200 accounts for various forms of cheating.
Cheating has been a hot topic in competitive Fortnite this week. The esports team Kaliber released one player, Johnathan Kosmala, for cheating during the World Cup qualifiers; Kosmala was allegedly turned in by the maker of the cheat he used. Rumors also swirled around another player, Dubs fn, who took second in the North American East region and qualified for the finals. Dubs denied the accusations, and no conclusive evidence of cheating has yet come to light.
Today, Epic released a news post about “competitive game integrity” that showed actions taken against players found to be cheating. The post detailed the following actions regarding week 1’s tournament: 1163 accounts, including 196 prize winners, were banned from competitive play for 14 days for getting around region lock and playing in multiple regions. 48 accounts, including nine prize winners, were banned for 14 days for account sharing. Eight accounts were banned for teaming, including one winner.
In all cases where prize winners had actions taken against them, those winners will forfeit any money they earned. Epic pointed out that this means tournament results will “shift” but “won’t currently be reflected on the in-game leaderboard.”
One account was banned from Fortnite permanently for using cheat software. Epic writes that “this account played for less than five minutes in the tournament before being banned.” It’s not clear if this is Team Kaliber’s Kosmala.
Another account received a 72-hour competitive ban for disconnecting on purpose to keep another player from getting points.
While Epic’s post did not directly comment on the rumors circulating about Dubs fn, it did write: “We appreciate the community’s concern around the integrity of the competition, but questioning the results of an individual participant without direct evidence unfairly tears apart what should be a crowning moment of achievement for an individual or team who earned their way there and performed when it counted.”
Epic wrote that it is working on improved teaming detection and urged players to report others they suspect of cheating. With the week 2 duos competition happening this weekend, we’ll see how this issue continues to play out.