In Fortnite there was a big tournament on Friday, where more than $100,000 was at stake again. The winner, a well-known Destiny player, is accused of using a mouse and keyboard on PS4. Furthermore, he allegedly tampered with the matches: He is said to be a cheater.
What kind of event was this? On Friday, the next eSports event of Fortnite took place: the second week of the Summer Skirmish Series, an $8 million tournament. The event took place on Friday and Saturday. Overall, $500,000 was at stake over the weekend.
eSports with randomly mixed lobbies
This is how unusually it was played: Selected players were invited to the event. However, they did not compete against each other, but took part in matches with randomly selected, “normal” players. Epic kept track and evaluated the first 10 matches of the invited players.
New format after the flop of the first tournament: The week went completely differently than the tournament the previous week. 98 professionals had still played against each other. However, due to lags and the defensive playing style, the first tournament failed catastrophically and had to be canceled after only 4 out of 10 games.
What were the rules? After the last event was so dull, this time there were mainly rewards for kills. Players had to collect as many points as possible:
5 points for an epic victory
1 point per elimination
Anyone who achieved 20 eliminations in a game received 10 points and an additional $10,000.
Therefore, it was most important for every player to dominate a match as much as possible and ideally kill at least 20 of the “normal” players and then secure the victory.
Accusations against the winner of Friday, a PS4 player
Unknown PS4 player wins Friday: The Friday was won with 184 points by the PS4 player iDroPz-BoDiEs. He is an unknown in the Fortnite community, actually he is a Destiny player. However, he outperformed known eSports players from “Faze” or “TSM” and placed them at the back.
What exactly is he accused of? On reddit there was a big thread with almost 40,000 upvotes. The player was accused of cheating. He allegedly:
Played as a PS4 player with a mouse and keyboard and thereby gained significant advantages
Manipulated matches so that he ended up in a match with friends, whom he then shot for “free kills”
Left matches early – supposedly whenever not enough of his “friends” could get into the match
Had already cheated before – it is generally questionable why he was even invited. He should have qualified through an in-game mode that was infested with cheats.
Deleted his Twitch account: When the accusations arose, his channel was suddenly deleted with all the clips that prove he is a cheater
Epic says: It was clean
This is what Epic says: The operators of Fortnite have exonerated the accused in a separate post (via Reddit). They have analyzed everything. The 129 kills of the player were all against different players. There is no evidence that he uses a mouse and keyboard. Nor did the data indicate that he did anything else illegal.
PS4 players do not have an unfair advantage: The last time PC and console players competed simultaneously, it became apparent that there are no significant differences among players on the platforms, Epic goes on. This was also the case in this event. In 11 matches, more than 20 kills were seen: 8 of them on PC, 3 on consoles.
This is what the player himself says: The alleged cheater says to Kotaku that you can hardly succeed without all the hate. But he wasn’t alone. He had the Destiny community on his side. By the way, he plays with a Cinch controller (via Kotaku). His Twitch account was deleted due to “Hateful Content”, but he will upload his matches on YouTube as proof of his innocence.
This format is also difficult: Separate PS4 from PC
Criticism of the format again: After the incident, criticism of the format in which Fortnite conducts its eSports resurfaces. If a competitive match is held in a randomly assembled lobby, such problems are bound to arise. Furthermore, it is absolutely necessary to separate PS4 players from PC players to avoid issues with mouse and keyboard, it says in the much-discussed Reddit post after Epic’s response.
Epic is already running an 8 million tournament, but apparently has not yet found a functioning format:
Fortnite consists of two games, the free battle royale and the still paid original game 'Save the World'. In battle royale mode, up to 100 players are dropped o...
