A couple of days ago, Epic Games filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the eastern district of North Carolina against Ediz Atas, also known as Sincey Cheats and Vanta Cheats, a maker of Fortnite cheats.
Epic Games alleges that Ediz Atas, also known as Sincey and Vanta Cheats, has made money from developing and selling cheat software for Fortnite since at least January 2023. According to the firm, the software gives players an unfair advantage over those who don't cheat and is therefore in violation of its EULA due to its circumvention of Fortnite's anti-cheat software. Epic also claims widespread cheating could put legitimate players off, potentially translating into a loss of sales of season passes and cosmetics. In its lawsuit, Epic said it was forced to ban tens of thousands of Fortnite accounts using Sincey Cheats software, including over 15K bans against accounts in the United States alone.
Furthermore, the lawsuit claims that, after Epic Games submitted DMCA takedown notices to YouTube to remove videos featuring the offending cheating software, Sincey Cheats sent multiple emails to YouTube's designated copyright agent, impersonating an Epic employee and falsely claiming that Epic wanted to “formally reverse its claim of copyright infringement” by spoofing Epic Games email addresses. You can see an example here.
The lawsuit also targets five unnamed defendants who have been reselling Sincey Cheats's software through various channels. Predictably, Epic Games is seeking compensatory and statutory damages, as well as covering attorney costs and other lawsuit-related costs.
This isn't the first time a game developer has sued a cheat maker. Bungie did it a few times recently against Destiny 2 cheat makers and even won against both LaviCheats (getting a multi-million dollar compensation) and AimJunkies. Whether that will be enough to discourage cheat makers remains to be seen.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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