Epic Games has filed individual lawsuits against alleged Fortnite: Battle Royale cheaters, claiming their actions ruin the game for honest players and violate both Fornite’s terms of service and end-user license agreement.
TorrentFreak first spotted the effort in the form of two civil complaints, which were filed in a North Carolina federal court earlier this week.
Both Charles Vraspir and Brandon Broom were named as defendants in the each of the two complaints, and both have been accused of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, breach of contract, and intentional interference with contractual relations. Additionally, the complaint against Broom lists circumvention of technological measures in violation of the Digital Millennium Copy Right Act.
“Defendant’s cheating, and his inducing and enabling of others to cheat, is ruining the game playing experience of players who do not cheat,” reads the complaint against Vraspir. “The software that Defendant uses to cheat infringes Epic’s copyrights in the game and breaches the terms of the agreements to which Defendant agreed in order to have access to the game.”
The claims partially stem from the fact that both parties were involved with the cheat provider AddictedCheats.net in some way, either as a moderator or support personnel, in addition to their own alleged cheating activities.
According to Epic, both defendants specifically targeted streamers while cheating. One of the pair had been banned at least nine times across different accounts prior to the formal legal complaint.
“Nobody likes a cheater. And nobody likes playing with cheaters. These axioms are particularly true in this case. Defendant uses cheats in a deliberate attempt to destroy the integrity of, and otherwise wreak havoc in, the Fortnite game,” read the complaints. “As Defendant intends, this often ruins the game for the other players, and for the many people who watch ‘streamers’.”
Epic is seeking up to $150,000 in statutory damages from each defendant for the copyright infringement alone. Epic’s move toward legal action wasn’t without warning, however. The company posted a blog post about the action it had already taken against Battle Royale cheaters, saying that it was “continuing to work on solutions” for persistent cheaters.