While Fortnite powers on as one of the world’s most recognised gaming IPs, carving out ground as not only one of the most popular forms of entertainment but also as a social space, exhibition venue and a professional sport, cracks continue to form.
One such event happened recently during Chapter 2: Season 7 of the Fortnite Champion Series, which invited players and pros from all over the world to compete for a mouth-watering prize pool of over $1 million.
In early September, while playing the tournament, professional Fortnite player MrSavage, from the house of 100 Thieves, was slapped with a ban for seemingly no reason. While the exact same events happened to former Trippernn, the former player for Tricked eSports.
While MrSavage immediately turned to Twitter to express his outrage, Epic Games were quick to respond by revoking the ban and unlocking his account almost immediately.
It goes without saying, that this seems incredibly sketchy. Despite MrSavage being a pro and thus undoubtedly having near-immediate contact with someone higher up in the ranks able to fast-forward the ban being lifted, the damage was done. With the ban leaving a lasting effect on his performance at the Fortnite Champion Series
Horrifically, for MrSavage and his team the ban occurred when his team had already reached the top five, making it incredibly consequential. And to rub salt in the wound, it appears that the ban was a targeted attack.
Abusing the System
According to MrSavage, who posted a video on twitter, he was banned due to a Russian streamer asking his stream viewers to mass report MrSavage’s team.
While the reveal of this resulted in Epic Games nullifying the results of two championship matches, many will see this as not enough as it clearly shows that the reporting system can be abused for nefarious ends.
While it is unclear how Epic could deal with such attacks, one suggestion levied by fans is to protect participants’ accounts during official tournament matches. And such action would most certainly make sense.
Big Winnings Promote Foul Play
While great play is at the heart of eSports, it goes without saying that when there’s money on the table, players are going to do all they can to win. With Fortnite prize pools growing exponentially, be it the world cup’s record of $15 million for solo players or the recent Champion’s $3 million prize pool, it’s fair to say that players are drooling at the concept of taking home big bucks.
With the cast of MrSavage, if the ban hadn’t been dealt with quicky, their team stood to lose a serious amount of winnings.
Fortunately, Epic Games seems to take such events incredibly seriously, resulting in the matches being nullified and forced to replay.
We can only hope that they make the system water-tight to ensure that future tournaments do not need to experience such hiccups.
If you’re aspiring to take part in one of Fortnite’s upcoming tournaments, listen up. Head on over to ElDorado.gg, where you can get some much-needed boosting or even get your hands on a high-ranked Fortnite account or even any other game like CoC account or LoL account as to pit you up against higher level players. Doing so will sharpen your skills, just maybe resulting in you being able to compete for the next prize pool.
More to Come?
With Epic Games already rolling out the next season of Fortnite Champion Series, now with a $8 million dollar prize pool, it’s likely that more and more aspiring players are flocking to the eSports championship.
With that, Epic Games will continue to be put to the test with events such as the one described above. This means that they will need to remain vigilant and fair, as they have to date, ensuring that nothing goes awry during championship matches.
While we have confidence that Epic Games have the drive to keep competitions fair and fun, we’ll have to wait and see if the next series can run without such an interruption.
