If there's one thing that could prevent Fortnite from really reaching the heights it deserves it's that Epic is currently embroiled in a fight with its own community over cheat devices. Well, one of those fights have finally ended now that the company has settled the lawsuit with one of Fortnite's cheaters.
Polygon is reporting that Epic Games has settled one of its cases against one of the alleged cheaters in the game. The article states that Charles Vraspir agreed to the settlement that Epic put forward, which involves no longer cheating in Epic's games, and destroying all the software, tools, updates, and information regarding the cheating utilities that were designed for Fortnite. If Vraspir violates the terms of the settlement, he could be fined at least $5,000.
The article states that Vraspir was allegedly tied to a website that offers cheat tools for other games for a subscription fee. The tools for Fortnite have reportedly been removed from the website, but cheat tools for other games offered up from Electronic Arts, Activision and Ubisoft are still available. The cheat tools will likely stay up and available unless the other publishers decide to send a cease and desist or sue, like Epic did.
The battle between Epic Games and Fortnite cheaters isn't over with, though. The company is also engaged in an intense battle with another cheater who is only 14-years-old. That case is a lot more complicated, because, according to state law, minors can't be sued directly. The mother of the 14-year-old had her lawyer write a scathing takedown of Epic and all the ways that the lawsuit comes across as frivolous. Epic states that it had to pursue legal action after the company used DMCA takedown against one of the videos that the 14-year-old uploaded featuring him using the cheats in Fortnite. The teenager challenged the DMCA claim, which then requires legal action to be taken on behalf of the claimant, which is exactly what Epic Games did. Don't be surprised if that case is settled as well.
Some gamers feel as if Epic is in the right, dispensing justice against cheaters of all kind and ensuring that gamers no longer cheat in multiplayer games. Others feel as if the lawsuits are overkill, especially given that cheating in a video game seems like a completely unimportant thing to sue someone over.
Then again, gamers have been sued for similar things in the past. CD Projekt caught the ire of gamers and truly rued the response that came from the community when the company began suing people it believed to be pirates that were illegally downloading copies of The Witcher. The lawsuits didn't quite turn out so well, and instead of taking up anti-consumer measures to curb piracy, CD Projekt opened up its own DRM-free digital distribution outlet and began embracing pirates as misunderstood consumers.
Gabe Newell also took a similar approach to dealing with pirates; instead of fighting against them Valve decided to make Steam a competitively priced digital distribution service where it's easier to acquire games through Steam than it is to pirate a game. It worked.
Epic still has a few more cases on its hands involving lawsuits against cheaters, so we'll see whether or not those cases will be settled or will head to court where both sides will deal with the long arm of the law.
