In the beginning of the week, game developer and publisher of Fortnite, Epic filed a civil suit against two prolific cheaters while playing the Battle Royale game online. The two alleged cheaters are recognized as Mr. Vraspir and Mr. Broom who is indicted for violating the terms of service of Fortnite and EULA by cheating. It includes modification and alteration in the game’s code, committed copyright infringement in the process. These two cheaters are associated with Addicted Cheats website and utilized its services to chase and kill Twitch streamers when they played the game live.
The Addicted Cheats website rents out botting services to lend a hand to players find the target and aim it. Epic Games alleged that to build those cheats, one has had to go deep and change Fortnite’s source code. The studio also claimed that altering the source’s code to win an online competition utterly violates the Fornite: Battle Royale game’s End User License Agreement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
It is indeed a multifaceted tightrope situation for game publishers to deal with cheaters. In the previous year, it was aired that a French video game publisher named Ubisoft Entertainment SA ramped up their bans for the players practicing code hacks to win the game. However, the studio chose to ban first-time rainbow six permanently and blocked cheaters. These days, Studios are aiming to target the hack creators themselves following the example GTA V’s publisher Take-Two sending DMCA notices to a website that hosted a popular mod which motivated players to mess with online game’s code.
But it is clearly visible that in this instance, Epic is not suing the website to get it off the web rather it is targeting the alleged cheaters for copyright infringement that carries a penalty of dollar 150,000 each. The two defendants are known for supplying technical support to website AddictedCheats.com perhaps that is why Epic Games decided to take this bold step and make an example.
As Epic stated in its complaint that one defendant was banned from Fornite several times round about nine times but the cheater was playing by creating new accounts. He is also blamed for using Addicted Cheats’ tools to hunt down the players when the game is live.
This type of practice is called stream-snipping which is strictly forbidden by the publishers of Game and Epic Games feels the two prolific cheaters meet to be liable for a lawsuit. Well, it is certainly intended to frighten potential creators of other hacks.
The website Addicted Cheats has particularly removed the Fortnite cheat and said it is closed for a legal issue.
Carolyn is a technology graduate and loves to write about anything related to technology as well as writes in others sectors. Carolyn is a professional writer with over 7 years of experience. Initially starting off as a programmer, Carolyn decided to combine her knowledge about technology and writing and that’s how she joined Reporter Expert.
