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28th Apr 2018

Developers of hit video-game Fortnite are suing a 14-year-old player for cheating

James Dawson

His mother is trying to stop the lawsuit.

Epic Games is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against a teenager who uploaded videos of himself cheating at Fortnite to YouTube – despite his mum trying to have the case dismissed.

The company said they would be suing two Fortnite players for cheating last year, as their actions violated terms of service for the game. With it later turning out that one of those players was just 14 years old.

IGN reports that the mother of the minor has outlined why she feels proceedings should cease, claiming that Epic ‘has no capability of proving [that Defendant’s action resulted in] any form of modification’, and that Epic ‘illegally released the defendant’s name’.

She also says that the company is unable to prove it has lost any money from his behaviour – or that he modified the game’s copyrighted code – and that Terms and the EULA are ‘not valid’ because her son is a minor and they did not seek parental consent.

However, Epic claims that the teenager live-streamed himself cheating while playing the game, demonstrating ‘his use of the cheat to unlawfully modify the Fortnite game code’ and instructing viewers ‘as to how to use the cheat in the same way’.

The developer’s lawsuit is against the copyrighted material the 14-year-old uploaded to YouTube and apparently, its aim is to remove all videos promoting Fortnite cheating software via this civil action.

For anyone completely out of the loop, the massively popular game sees 100 at first weaponless players dropped onto an island and face off in a battle royale – which makes cheating especially annoying as it ruins to game for every other player in the contest.

The game has attracted widespread public attention, with Drake live streaming himself playing the game to an audience of 230,000 active and Dele Alli filming himself playing it during Wednesday’s Champions League semi-final between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.

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