There’s been a lot of talk about viewbots lately. That talk is mostly centered around Twitch and Kick and their efforts (with varying degrees of success) to keep streamers from fluffing their viewership numbers with fake engagement.
But there’s another platform that’s taking the most aggressive stance yet: Fortnite maker Epic Games, which just filed suit against two developers, alleging they used bots to boost their Islands’ traffic.
Quick context for those who might not be familiar: Epic offers its game creation engine, Unreal Editor for Fortnite, to game developers of all sizes, letting them use its power and assets to make their own digital destinations within the Fortnite platform. Other players can then visit these destinations–aka Islands–to do things like explore the landscape and buildings and play new game modes or minigames. Epic then pays developers per month based on how much engagement their Islands generate (and, soon, how many in-game items they sell).
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Okay, back to the lawsuit: Epic says the developers, Michigan-based Idris Nahdi and Ayob Nasser, created over 20,000 fake bot accounts and sent them off to each other’s Islands, artificially inflating the Islands’ engagement. Between them, they had 10 active Islands, and the bots were not deployed to any other Islands–just each other’s.
That artificial engagement resulted in Epic paying the duo “tens of thousands of dollars” for traffic that was not real, the suit alleges.
Epic says that over 80% of the engagement on Nahdi and Nasser’s Islands was fake, rising up to 99% at times. Its official claims are breach of contract, copyright infringement, and fraud.
The suit aims to recover what Epic paid for the alleged fake engagement, plus damages, and asks the judge to permaban Nahdi and Nasser from Fortnite and every other Epic Games IP/server.
Epic has been litigious before, successfully suing hack sellers, DDoSers, and cheating players, so we’re not surprised it went the legal route with this issue, too.
However this case shakes out, it’s a clear indication that Epic is keeping a close eye on its game developer/creator population as it continues to expand their power within Fortnite. Like we mentioned above, Epic plans to introduce the ability for developers to sell digital items this coming December, bringing it closer in line with competitor Roblox and giving creators more opportunities to make money. Obviously Epic plans to make sure that when it pays that money out, the creators actually earned it.
