Epic Games Respond to Accusations that Fortnite Summer Skirmish Winner Cheated – “There is no evidence”
After growing controversy surrounding accusations of foul play from the winner of Summer Skirmish Week 2, Epic Games has responded, concluding that they are satisfied there was no wrongdoing.
A player named ‘iDroPz_BoDiEs‘ was invited to the tournament thanks to his placing in the ‘Solo Showdown’ LTM, and walked away with first place and $60,000 after an incredible performance.
[ad name=”article1″]
However, for a number of reasons other competitors and lots of fans began to doubt the legitimacy of his scores and matches.
He was suspected because he wasn’t streaming – however this isn’t required. He also was accused of using a keyboard and mouse while playing on PS4. Lastly, he was accused of having friends join his game of various accounts and allow him to kill them to boost his score.
[ad name=”article2″]
A reddit user compiled all the accusations levelled against the winning player, which you can find here, titling the post “A crime was committed yesterday during the [Summer] Skirmish”.
But, Epic Games has made it clear that after investigation, none of these claims and accusations hold up.
Of note, they state that although there is ‘no evidence’ that iDropz_Bodies used a keyboard and mouse, it is not actually against the rules to do so, in order to promote inclusivity.
“We do not restrict input device for players on our platforms in an effort to promote accessibility for our entire audience.“
You can read the full statement from Epic Games below.
[ad name=”article3″]
Hey all,
We wanted to drop in with information regarding Friday’s Summer Skirmish and the performance of the winner iDropz_Bodies in an effort of clarify some assumptions held by the community.
iDroPz_BoDiEs was unable to stream the event due to a Summer Skirmish rules requirement of a 2-minute stream delay for participants which wish to broadcast. This delay cannot be set on the console capture software and is not possible for non-Affiliates on Twitch. Following the event, he broadcasted replays of his Summer Skirmish matches.
Our rules do not stipulate that a participant must stream the event, as we do not wish to exclude players who were invited based on their own merit because they cannot stream – iDroPz_BoDiEs was invited to Summer Skirmish based off his performance in prior Showdown LTMs.
Now to address some concerns around that performance:
- Our internal Summer Skirmish analytics kept track of all opponents which participants eliminated. iDroPz_BoDiEs had 129 eliminations during the event and every single elimination was on a different opponent. This is not indicative of him having been intentionally fed eliminations and/or collusion with other players.
- Our analytics events also noted when players left the match prior to the bus deploying, and recorded those matches. iDroPz_BoDiEs did not join more than the specified 10 matches for the event, the narrative that he was leaving if the server wasn’t full or the bus wasn’t on a favorable path is false.
- Stat tracking sites are unreliable for recording historic performance, as they only update when the website requests stats for a user from the API. This makes any ‘Most Eliminations in a Single Match’ records on an account unlikely to be correct, as multiple matches in a time period are combined into one update. iDroPz_BoDiEs has achieved more than 20 eliminations in a match multiple times across his Fortnite career.
- In previous Showdown LTM’s which followed a similar scoring format on public servers, there has been no discernible difference in final score between top performers on PC and Console platforms. During this event we saw 11 matches break the 20 elimination mark, with 8 of them on PC and 3 on Console.
- There is no evidence that would suggest to us that iDroPz_BoDiEs played the competition using a mouse and keyboard. Furthermore, we do not restrict input device for players on our platforms in an effort to promote accessibility for our entire audience.
We appreciate the community’s concern around the integrity of the competition, but questioning the results of an individual participant without evidence unfairly tears apart at what should be a crowning moment of achievement for an individual who earned their way there and performed when it counted.
Our primary goal is to support competition that is fun, inclusive, and in line with the overall spirit of Fortnite. Unsportsmanlike conduct from participants is not within that spirit, and will not be tolerated in Fortnite competition.
EDIT: To address additional comments, none of the accounts which were eliminated by iDroPz_BoDiEs were created between the time he was informed of his participation and the event itself.
Source: Reddit
