The previous month saw Epic Games upping its security by not just banning cheaters but also suing two of them for allegedly cheating in the survival video game "Fortnite." One of them is a 14-year-old minor. Now, the game developer is suffering the wrath of his mother.
The teenager was sued after using custom botting service Addictive Cheats to take out Twitch streamers in the highly competitive game.
But in a scathing and well-researched legal rebuttal, the boy's mother is asking Epic to throw out the case for several reasons.
One, she said the game developer would find it hard to prove in court that her underage son was bound by its end user licensing agreement (EULA). First, because "Fortnite" is a free-to-play game, and second, it does not ask its underage users to get their parents' consent, which she says she never gave her son.
Two, the mother reiterated that being a free-to-play game means her son's cheating did not affect its profits in any way, adding that the game's revenue comes mainly from microtransaction purchases of in-game items.
Finally, she argued that Epic Games violated her son's privacy rights, after naming and directly suing him, considering he is a minor -- acts that are illegal in some states.
Basically, what the mother is trying to point out is that her son, like hundreds of others, simply downloaded the cheats on a popular website, but he neither developed nor distributed them. A copy of her rebuke can be seen below.
But Epic Games argues that the boy explained how to use the cheats through a YouTube video, which the company ordered to take down, to the boy's refusal. Instead, he made a second YouTube video, livestreaming himself while cheating.
"Epic is not okay with ongoing cheating or copyright infringement from anyone at any age. As stated previously, we take cheating seriously, and we'll pursue all available options to make sure our games are fun, fair, and competitive for players," the game developer said in an official statement.
This legal battle between a global game developer and a mother-and-son duo has raised a heated debate on punishing cheaters, instead of just banning them in video games, a rather unorthodox move from Epic Games.
