Epic Games suing YouTuber for selling Fortnite cheats

[Liam_Selby]

Epic Games suing YouTuber for selling Fortnite cheats

Fortnite creator Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against YouTuber Brandon Lucas for using and selling cheats.

Brandon Lucas, who goes by “Golden Modz”, posted videos of the cheats he used and sold the cheat tools through his website, according to Engadget.

 

[Koosie]

What cheats?

 

[Surv0]

Geezuz.. how bad do you need to be to buy cheats for Fortnight? Not like the game is challenging at all..

Hope they make an example of him/them.. sue their pants off to deter others.. cheating is rife atm, all games.

 

[Soul Assassin]

What cheats?

Aimbot and wall hacks, including being able to see loot through walls and what's inside unopened chests.

 

[Koosie]

Ah ok, I hope they make a nice example of the cheater.

 

[Soul Assassin]

Ah ok, I hope they make a nice example of the cheater.

My first time ever running into a cheater was right after this knobs videos started getting millions of views.

The person I ran into was banned within the week with all his "rare" skins.

 

[Koosie]

My first time ever running into a cheater was right after this knobs videos started getting millions of views.

The person I ran into was banned within the week with all his "rare" skins.

Was that the video you posted?

 

[Soul Assassin]

Was that the video you posted?

Yes, the video was called Aimbot and Wall Hacks.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

Geezuz.. how bad do you need to be to buy cheats for Fortnight? Not like the game is challenging at all..

Hope they make an example of him/them.. sue their pants off to deter others.. cheating is rife atm, all games.

True, but should it really be the gamers fault for exposing/exploiting a cheat? The onus should be on the developer to have a working product in the first place...

 

[Willie Trombone]

My first time ever running into a cheater was right after this knobs videos started getting millions of views.

The person I ran into was banned within the week with all his "rare" skins.

How about users sue the gaming co for these loopholes tho. The world is messed up.

 

[Willie Trombone]

True, but should it really be the gamers fault for exposing/exploiting a cheat? The onus should be on the developer to have a working product in the first place...

Very much this.

 

[Surv0]

True, but should it really be the gamers fault for exposing/exploiting a cheat? The onus should be on the developer to have a working product in the first place...

This is a very thin line to walk... the constant balancing act between game developers and cheat developers. By buying a cheat in order to expose it, is a cop out excuse. Dont make vids of it, promoting your own content and merchandise along with it, in order to expose it is hypocritical.

There is a ton of it on reddit, person abuses an exploit, for their own gain, and using the excuse that by doing it, they are exposing it and the developers must fix it. Well yes, thats sort of true, it will likely gain momentum, and shift the development priorities to deal with this new exploit but you are cheating, bottom line and just using this as an excuse.

Ive seen the extent to which cheat devs goto, and the work required to counter this is insane, its a never ending shifting battle. Its very difficult in FPS type games, more so than others so its mainly a factor in this genre than in others.

Players implicated in the above, generally never engage privately as testers who identify bugs/exploits and keep them to themselves and the devs, but generally try make some revenue or public exposure through it to drive viewership.

I look at what Escape From Tarkov devs are having to do to create an inhouse anti cheat, more powerful than most public ones, and more invasive as well (love the russians) but even they are fighting an uphill battle. The problem with performing ingame operations on the local machine, and being able to hack memory to change this stuff. If everything moves to server side, you potentially break the game.

To make a fully exploit/hack free FPS game must nearly be impossible and to spend stupid amounts of resources to counter this will delay games and up the price of them. Its just easier to blame the developers on this, soft targets, but its the people creating these hacks that need to be targeted. Make it an economical nightmare for them, lobby for some new laws around digital content maybe (cheating in a digital game should be digital fraud) and stop the rot where it starts. Asking the developers to manage this is is the wrong way to go about it and a common trend to avoid self regulating.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

This is a very thin line to walk... the constant balancing act between game developers and cheat developers. By buying a cheat in order to expose it, is a cop out excuse. Dont make vids of it, promoting your own content and merchandise along with it, in order to expose it is hypocritical.

There is a ton of it on reddit, person abuses an exploit, for their own gain, and using the excuse that by doing it, they are exposing it and the developers must fix it. Well yes, thats sort of true, it will likely gain momentum, and shift the development priorities to deal with this new exploit but you are cheating, bottom line and just using this as an excuse.

Ive seen the extent to which cheat devs goto, and the work required to counter this is insane, its a never ending shifting battle. Its very difficult in FPS type games, more so than others so its mainly a factor in this genre than in others.

Players implicated in the above, generally never engage privately as testers who identify bugs/exploits and keep them to themselves and the devs, but generally try make some revenue or public exposure through it to drive viewership.

I won't get into a debate about the correct way to expose it. FWIW I agree with you that it should be reported correctly instead of being exploited. I hate cheats as much as the next honest guy.

But it's ridiculous to sue someone for picking up on something that your QA team should have.

And to work around the cheat devs, you can't always win. But you can have a decent anti-cheat system in place to determine what should and shouldn't be possible. And then actively ban people when it catches them...

 

[Surv0]

I won't get into a debate about the correct way to expose it. FWIW I agree with you that it should be reported correctly instead of being exploited. I hate cheats as much as the next honest guy.

But it's ridiculous to sue someone for picking up on something that your QA team should have.

And to work around the cheat devs, you can't always win. But you can have a decent anti-cheat system in place to determine what should and shouldn't be possible. And then actively ban people when it catches them...

Yeah we are in agreement. Although in these cases, this is a money making stream.. the user wont want to engage and blocking them may not be possible. HID bans, account bans, what ever, it can all be bypassed. So from their point of view, a financial implication in the way of a law suit may stop them in their tracks. This doesnt mean they shouldnt stop working on an anti cheat (sounds like Fortnight hasnt bothered at all) but its a good first step to try curb the behavior. If the guy was just making random vids, thats one thing, but the guy is actively pushing his business on the back of this games lack of anti cheat. Make an example of him. In fact people like him shouldnt even deserve the devils advocacy on this topic, they should be dealt with swiftly and affectively. Have a proactive thought process instead of a reactive one (Im not going to cheat because Ill be sued, rather than Ill cheat until they catch me and ban me, then Ill just create a new account payed for by my followers/subscribers).

The best anti cheat is still human driven, an automated AI is very difficult if the game isnt running 100% netcode/performance wise. How to distinguish between latency based issues and actual cheats can be murky sometimes.

 

[Soul Assassin]

Yeah we are in agreement. Although in these cases, this is a money making stream.. the user wont want to engage and blocking them may not be possible. HID bans, account bans, what ever, it can all be bypassed. So from their point of view, a financial implication in the way of a law suit may stop them in their tracks. This doesnt mean they shouldnt stop working on an anti cheat (sounds like Fortnight hasnt bothered at all) but its a good first step to try curb the behavior. If the guy was just making random vids, thats one thing, but the guy is actively pushing his business on the back of this games lack of anti cheat. Make an example of him. In fact people like him shouldnt even deserve the devils advocacy on this topic, they should be dealt with swiftly and affectively. Have a proactive thought process instead of a reactive one (Im not going to cheat because Ill be sued, rather than Ill cheat until they catch me and ban me, then Ill just create a new account payed for by my followers/subscribers).

The best anti cheat is still human driven, an automated AI is very difficult if the game isnt running 100% netcode/performance wise. How to distinguish between latency based issues and actual cheats can be murky sometimes.

Fortnite uses BattlEye and Easy Anti-Cheat, I played basically daily for a year give or take a couple of days here and there and I only ran into one person cheating, well the headline says cheating but it's hacking, if you watch the videos of this person they are suing he even says the accounts are banned within days but Fortnite is free so they just create a new account and do it again.

This person does not do it to expose exploits and help the developers, in the video he states it's just a bit of fun, a bit of trolling, at the expense of other people and for monetary gain.

 

[Johnatan56]

If he hadn't gained money, it would be okay in terms of just leaving it at a ban, the moment he is profiting by breaking T&C's, Epic Games is right to sue.

 

[Beyond.Celsus]

As far as I know, the moment you change or switch around code without the developers permission you have broken the EULA and therefore the law.
Regardless of intentions, it makes you a criminal.

 

[Soul Assassin]

If he hadn't gained money, it would be okay in terms of just leaving it at a ban, the moment he is profiting by breaking T&C's, Epic Games is right to sue.

As far as I know, the moment you change or switch around code without the developers permission you have broken the EULA and therefore the law.
Regardless of intentions, it makes you a criminal.

It's the same thing that happened last time when it turned out the kid was 14 or something, this time I don't think they are backing down, from a quick Google this person is 22. Epic Games is going to make an example of this guy, his whole YouTube channel is built around modding, hacking and bullying in games like GTA V and Fortnite.

I don't think he fully realises what is going on, on his Twitter he says "Imagine getting sued for making a youtube video lmao what" and he tweeted at some YouTube drama channel to get exposure on the situation, he somehow thinks this is just YouTube news and it's going to go away in a week not realising this is the real world now.

 

[Beyond.Celsus]

Does the original article contain the link to the channel?
Want to check it out before it goes dark.

 

[Johnatan56]

It's the same thing that happened last time when it turned out the kid was 14 or something, this time I don't think they are backing down, from a quick Google this person is 22. Epic Games is going to make an example of this guy, his whole YouTube channel is built around modding, hacking and bullying in games like GTA V and Fortnite.

I don't think he fully realises what is going on, on his Twitter he says "Imagine getting sued for making a youtube video lmao what" and he tweeted at some YouTube drama channel to get exposure on the situation, he somehow thinks this is just YouTube news and it's going to go away in a week not realising this is the real world now.

Yeah, hope they push it.

The reason I say one shouldn't sue if no money, as then it's usually for interest sake/learning and usually gets open sourced/allows for devs to fix, but the moment money gets involved it's a business, and he is making money off the fact that he's ruining the game for others and thereby damaging Fortnite's income, which is a big no.