They created an army of 20,000 bots to trick Epic Games. The company is going to court
Epic Games sued players who used an army of bots to make money off the “popularity” of the islands they created.
Bots messing with Fortnite Island popularity stats have landed some "clever" players in court.
Epic Games doesn't hesitate to take cheaters (and not only them) to court. Idris Nahdi and Ayob Nasser, two Fortnite players, found this out when they came up with a way to profit from one of the attractions of this popular battle royale.
Bots, Islands and money
If you've heard Tim Sweeney's thoughts on the metaverse, it won't surprise you that Epic Games is all about encouraging player creativity. This includes the Island system, which consists of custom maps created by fans. The dev not only provided tools to create such creations easily but also rewarded the creators of the most popular Islands.
This is by no means a symbolic reward. In the content of a new lawsuit, Epic Games claims that it pays "millions of dollars" annually to the creators of the most frequently visited Islands. Apparently, two players who, as noted by Polygon (via PC Gamer), got on the company's bad side decided to artificially boost the statistics of their maps with bots artificially.
According to EG, about 88-99% of the players visiting Basser and Nahdi's Islands were bots, and between December 2024 and February 2025, the two cheaters had about 20,000 AI-driven "players" at their disposal.
Defendants programmed the bot accounts to engage with Defendants’ own Fortnite Islands by using a cloud gaming service that allows users to play video games, like Fortnite, remotely. Defendants worked together to create multiple Islands in an attempt to disguise their scheme by spreading the fake engagement across multiple developer accounts and Islands.
Epic was supposed to pay players tens of thousands of dollars before the company's employees realized that a scam had taken place. Soon after, the developer issued an ultimatum: the cheaters were to stop playing Fortnite and "destroy all copies of the game in their possession."
As you might easily guess, the pair didn't heed the developer's warning. Hence, the lawsuit and Epic Games' attempt to recover the money, as well as enforce a ban on creating Epic accounts. In fact, the company is demanding that this restriction be extended to the "heirs and successors" of the defendants. This seems unlikely, but it must be admitted that it could effectively deter other "creative" players.
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Author: Jacob Blazewicz
Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).
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