Epic Games Sues Fortnite Cheaters for Copyright Infringement

Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against a pair of cheaters in its Fortnite game that alleges copyright infringement. The two people were allegedly cheating in the game and are associated with a subscription website called Addicted Cheats. That website offered services allowing the subscriber to hunt down and kill players that were streaming on Twitch live.

The site is said to rent out botting services to help players find specific gamers and aim at targets. Epic says in its suit that to create the bot service, the individuals cheating had to modify the game source code to give them the edge in the game, violating the End User License Agreement and Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Since these two cheaters are being sued for copyright infringement, they could be fined up to $150,000 each.

This is a different tactic, Epic Games isn’t trying to get the cheat service taken offline, rather it is trying to make the cheaters themselves liable for infringement. The two defendants in the suit are said to provide technical support for AddictedCheats.com reports Engadget.

Epic claims in the suit that one of the defendants had been banned nine times and had simply created different accounts each time to get back in the game. That oft-banned cheater had used Addicted Cheats tools to find popular payers who were live streaming and kill them in a practice called “stream-sniping.” The game specifically forbids anyone from using programs or processes that give them an unfair advantage. While the suit is ongoing Addicted Cheats has taken the Fortnite cheat offline saying it is closed for a legal issue.