'Fortnite' Player Accuses Ninja of Getting Them Banned, Epic Games Responds

A Fortnite player accused Ninja of getting them banned after the streamer reported the player for [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

A Fortnite player accused Ninja of getting them banned after the streamer reported the player for having high ping, but Epic Games has since cleared the air to say the claims are false.

Originating from a post on Reddit which ironically began with "This is not clickbait," a player shared a clip showing Ninja's stream where the well-known streamer was eliminated by a player, apparently due to a difference in ping that caused some discrepancies between what Ninja thought should've happened and what actually occurred. After talking about the situation for a moment, Ninja pulled up the "report" option and reported the player for having a higher ping than him, a report that's clearly a joke and wouldn't be taken seriously by Epic Games.

But according to the player who shared the post, the situation was taken seriously and resulted in a ban a few days later. In their video, the player claimed they reached out to Epic Games multiple times and defended their side of the story.

The situation blew up quickly over the course of just one day when the post on the most active Fortnite subreddit rocketed to over 40,000 upvotes. Likely fueled by recent reports of Ninja reporting a separate player for allegedly stream sniping him, people were quick to believe the anonymous player's story and bought into the witch hunt against Ninja. As the post gained attention, a representative from Epic Games commented within it to clear the air.

"We take the reporting and actioning of accounts very seriously," a representative from Epic Games said. "We treat every report the same and follow the same process to determine what action is necessary. There are two accounts involved in this: Account A which was the account originally reported by Ninja and Account B which is tied to a YouTube video we discovered."

Following that statements, the Epic Games employee broke down a step-by-step account of what transpired regarding the alleged banning.

  • On Oct 2nd, Account B was disabled for reasons unrelated to player reporting.
  • On Oct 3rd, Account A was reported by Ninja. It was investigated and not actioned due to lack of evidence.
  • On Oct 4th, Account A changed their display name away from the name reported on October 3.
  • On Nov 13th, Account B was re-enabled based on a review of the underlying system.
  • On Nov 17th, account B changed their display name to match the display name of account A at the time of Ninja's report.

"We became aware of a YouTube video claiming that we banned (and then unbanned) account B based on Ninja's report, which is false. We hope this clears up the sequence of actions," the comment from Epic Games concluded.

The account the Reddit post originated from has since been deleted, and Ninja has since tweeted about the situation to criticize people's tendencies to believe inflammatory posts or stories at face value.

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