‘Fortnite’ Potentially Banning Keyboard and Mouse Cheaters

Fortnite players who use a keyboard and mouse adapter on consoles appear to be facing bans for cheating, a player’s account suggests.

Microsoft is working on adding keyboard and mouse support to the Xbox One with a partnership with Razer, but the choice to allow the use of the PC peripherals depends entirely on what individual developers want. Fortnite doesn’t support the use of keyboards and mice on the game’s console versions, but players have been able to bypass that by using adapters that “trick” the console into thinking a normal controller is being used. That plan resulted in one player being kicked with no way to play another game even after switching back to a controller.

Dexerto reported on one player’s story of an apparent ban and said that a Redditor by the name of AlternativePlan98 was kicked from a game and unable to compete in another one afterwards. Sharing a post within the XIM subreddit, the player said that they were using an XIM Apex keyboard and mouse adapter on Fortnite’s console version and was kicked for having an incorrect input device.

“Today I got kicked out of two matches back to back where a message popped up telling me I’m using ‘a different input method,’” the player said. “Funny thing is after restarting the game it again tells me that I’m using a controller which is obviously false. Since there is no way to tell Fortnite that I’m using M+C I’m not able to play Fortnite anymore because I get kicked as soon as I start to use my weapon or move fast.”

Following that first story, another player shared an image that showed they’d been met with similar results. The image appears to show a message similar to the one that the other player subscribed with the second Redditor’s post saying that they received this message on the Xbox One version of Fortnite. They didn’t give an indication of whether or not the input device ban persisted into the next few games after switching back to a controller, but the post was within the same subreddit to suggest that a similar device was being used.

While using a keyboard and mouse is obviously supported on the PC version, Epic Games implemented input-based matchmaking in the past to group players with those who were using the same input devices. These types of adapters allow this to be circumvented and would therefore qualify as cheating, so it’s unsurprising to see actions being taken against players for using the devices.