Mom Claims Teen is a 'Scapegoat' When Sued by Epic Games for Cheating - Fortnite - MMORPG.com

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Mom Claims Teen is a 'Scapegoat' When Sued by Epic Games for Cheating - Fortnite - MMORPG.com

Fortnite News - As we reported last month, Epic Games named two Fortnite players in a lawsuit against cheaters in Fortnite: Battle Royale. The suit alleged that "Vraspir" and "Broom" infringed on the company's copyright by using a program that made changes to the game's code and thereby violating the ToS. However, it appears that one of the defendants in the lawsuit is a 14-year-old whose mother says that he is a scapegoat in Epic's ongoing battle against cheats and hacks in Fortnite.

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DEXA88

Yea right im a minor so im excused from cheating. The lawsuit should be against the parents for lack of control!

Scot

If this had come from someone less biased than his mother I might have read it. Perhaps now she will take notice of what he is doing on line...its called parenting.

ciely

DEXA88 said:

Yea right im a minor so im excused from cheating. The lawsuit should be against the parents for lack of control!

OH NOW she is parenting, where was she when her son was livestreaming hacks, a example needs to be made so people take cheating seriously and stop. i wish other games would sue all the botters and hackers

Asm0deus

While I am not saying his account shouldn't be banned for cheating, minor or not, it looks like Epic games made some fairly substantial blunders by releasing his name to the public if there are laws there against that.

Dunno but so much hoopla for an aimbot, have to say ladeda here, which maybe end up with Epic being in "more" trouble than the person they are suing.

Seems WoW aka Blizzard has had cheating problems for a long time but have they ever sued one of their customers, much less minors?

Seems to me they have went after the people making these cheats which makes more sense and you have to ask if why not, I am thinking their lawyers told them to do it this way for a good reason.

Wizardry

I doubt they have any chance of winning that suit.

I doubt the user could assume it is making changes to the copyright code,he did not create the hack.
It would be nice to see these devs eat their own words as they have been using the FALSE moniker of FREE to play for a long time now.
The term "to play" would assume as intended by design,any form of pay wall is NOT as intended to mean FREE to play,it would be a FORCED pay wall,therefor NOT free.These devs would have to start labeling their games as SOMEWHAT free to play but not entirely.

The "minor "infraction may get Epic in some trouble for releasing his name however she should be careful because they could lean a suit towards her being it was her internet in use,although i assume the proof of use is on a YouTube video.None the less,i know for fact that you the parent is responsible for that internet use no matter your child is 14 or 3 years old.

On the subject of profit loss,that was the first real chance devs had at going for lawsuits as there seemed to be no chance otherwise.This avenue i believe was also first tried by Epic years ago going after a couple people creating cheats for Unreal Tournament.I am not sure how that argument was conceived in courts,there might even be an argument that cheating encourages more users as everyone wants to win.I know personally i quit COD forever because cheating was not taken care of ,so long term cheating i am certain costs devs money.

xyzercrime

Moral of the story:

Stop cheating or your mom will know about it, literally.

YashaX

I don't understand the bit about the cheaters being staff members of this site. Are you saying a 14yr old is a staff member on this site, or did Epic initially claim the pair were from this site, or is that referring to some other cheating incident?

 EDIT: Oh I see, "this site" refers to the site that sells the aimbot program, gotcha

rastapastor

Well i have no opinion on it because i don't know the whole story. The only opinion i have is that game publishers should sue the creators of the said cheating tools. So the question is, did the kid made this tool ?

But one thing is interesting, i didnt follow this case (hear of it the first time), but if its true that Epic released the personal data of this kid and its illegal, they are in a deep shit too, since the mother can just sue them for causing the mental damage to her kid by making his actions public and the public stigmatized the kid...but i am no lawyer nor expert of the state law.

The moral of the story is, just don't cheat

MaxBacon

It's not a scapegoat, it's a PR thing.

They have to publicly crucify someone to send a message, to the general public "Look what we do to cheaters.", to the other "Look what we will do to you.".

Elsabolts

Mom and Dad should make him clean up the basement before he leaves for college.

Kyleran

No idea how this turned out, but back in 2003 a 12 year old was publically named in a music sharing lawsuit which resembles this situation somewhat.

Similar counterclaims were made by her mother and the company's excuse for naming a minor is they had no way of knowing the girl's age.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/09/09/12-year-old-sued-for-music-downloading.html

Elsabolts

Kyleran said:

No idea how this turned out, but back in 2003 a 12 year old was publically named in a music sharing lawsuit which resembles this situation somewhat.

Similar counterclaims were made by her mother and the company's excuse for naming a minor is they had no way of knowing the girl's age.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/09/09/12-year-old-sued-for-music-downloading.html

Some folks are not gonna like your sorce Kyleran. Stand by for "High winds and Heavy Seas" lol

Kyleran

Elsabolts said:

Kyleran said:

No idea how this turned out, but back in 2003 a 12 year old was publically named in a music sharing lawsuit which resembles this situation somewhat.

Similar counterclaims were made by her mother and the company's excuse for naming a minor is they had no way of knowing the girl's age.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/09/09/12-year-old-sued-for-music-downloading.html

Some folks are not gonna like your sorce Kyleran. Stand by for "High winds and Heavy Seas" lol

I make no claim over the validity of the information presented.  

What I found as an interesting parallel is the girl had paid a sub fee for a music sharing service, but the recording industry chose to sue users of the service's software,  and not the service company itself.

Dakeru

The kid reminds me of this one:

TalulaRose

"This particular lawsuit arose as a result of the defendant filing a DMCA counterclaim to a takedown notice on a YouTube video that exposed and promoted Fortnite Battle Royale cheats and exploits."

They asked the kid to take down the video from Youtube (the evidence of him cheating) and the kid sued them. Too young to be responsible for his actions but old enough to get a lawyer and counter sue?

Sorry but mom and kid seem like they are abusing the law.

Albatroes

My thoughts are....this is a no win for the parent. Depending on Delaware's state laws, this kid is going into the system vs home, especially if the mother manages to really tick Epic off. Some of her points just point to an unsafe environment, meaning that the kid will go the government due to her negligents on this whole thing, such as how long the child was playing the product and where he was engaging from without her supposed knowledge. So even if she does manage to 'win' the state will probably just go after her afterwards. Best thing I feel she could've done is just talked to them privately (if she hasn't already) and then Epic could've done some public clean up to salvage the rest of the kid's 'reputation' instead of the high potential of him going into the system.

Elsabolts

TalulaRose said:

"This particular lawsuit arose as a result of the defendant filing a DMCA counterclaim to a takedown notice on a YouTube video that exposed and promoted Fortnite Battle Royale cheats and exploits."

They asked the kid to take down the video from Youtube (the evidence of him cheating) and the kid sued them. Too young to be responsible for his actions but old enough to get a lawyer and counter sue?

Sorry but mom and kid seem like they are abusing the law.

Surley a future democratic voter and mother would not abuse the law ?

k61977

Well my question to her would be how did her son pay online to use the aimbot? If he used his parents credit card that is assumed as consent because a 14 year old cannot have a credit card. Just because you let your child do whatever they please online you can't come back with I didn't let him play it or buy that program when there is a record of purchase. If a parent is not looking at their bills they are just as much at fault as the child. I don't agree with the company for suing the child, think it should be directed at the parents since they paid for the aimbot. By paying for a aimbot yes you specifically help in the creations and continuation of it's making also. I would love to see the devs win this in court myself, just maybe if this happened more people would take notice and cheaters would start to learn that there are consequences for their actions, even in gaming. First and foremost I would love to see the devs of the cheat engines taken down over anything else, but taking down those that use them is also a good thing in my book.

Sovrath

Asm0deus said:

While I am not saying his account shouldn't be banned for cheating, minor or not, it looks like Epic games made some fairly substantial blunders by releasing his name to the public if there are laws there against that.

Dunno but so much hoopla for an aimbot, have to say ladeda here, which maybe end up with Epic being in "more" trouble than the person they are suing.

Seems WoW aka Blizzard has had cheating problems for a long time but have they ever sued one of their customers, much less minors?

Seems to me they have went after the people making these cheats which makes more sense and you have to ask if why not, I am thinking their lawyers told them to do it this way for a good reason.

More than likely they are trying to establish that they are willing to go after the problem not the symptom.

It's the "if people weren't willing to pay for these services there wouldn't be these services".

I think they are hoping that it will make players think twice. The more players who balk at buying these services the fewer players who support these services.

GeezerGamer

Kid cheats, kid gets caught big publicity on both sides over......what was the name of this game again?

In other news.......you can buy a box of Strawberry Jello at Walmart for $1.48

Elsabolts

GeezerGamer said:

Kid cheats, kid gets caught big publicity on both sides over......what was the name of this game again?

In other news.......you can buy a box of Strawberry Jello at Walmart for $1.48

https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=strawberry jello mix&cat_id=976759&typeahead=strawberry jello

Ozmodan

Elsabolts said:

Kyleran said:

No idea how this turned out, but back in 2003 a 12 year old was publically named in a music sharing lawsuit which resembles this situation somewhat.

Similar counterclaims were made by her mother and the company's excuse for naming a minor is they had no way of knowing the girl's age.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/09/09/12-year-old-sued-for-music-downloading.html

Some folks are not gonna like your sorce Kyleran. Stand by for "High winds and Heavy Seas" lol

Kind of funny, I never looked at the source until you pointed it out.  Then again, most of these news services are biased.  The release of questionable stories by major news services makes you question any of them.

As to the mother, she is probably correct that they are singling out her son, but it also points out her lack of parenting skill.  You have to wonder about the poor moral choices these kids make and what their parents are teaching them.  

GeezerGamer

Poor parenting choices aside, the kid posted actual events. That doesn't mean he gets to keep playing the game. But he has a right to post his nonsense on YouTube. Or do we actually like the idea that companies can dictate legally that we can't expose the flaws in their stuff?

Dakeru

Ozmodan said:

As to the mother, she is probably correct that they are singling out her son, 

They clearly said the kid sued them first.
Hard to see the kid as a victim when he tossed the first stone.

Kyleran

GeezerGamer said:

Poor parenting choices aside, the kid posted actual events. That doesn't mean he gets to keep playing the game. But he has a right to post his nonsense on YouTube. Or do we actually like the idea that companies can dictate legally that we can't expose the flaws in their stuff?

I'm not of a liberal nature so I am OK with companies controlling information on illegal use of their software,  or products that assist in such use.