During week two of the Fornite Summer Skirmish a player by the name of iDropz_Bodies shocked gamers by winning the huge $130,000 of first place prize money.
The previously unknown iDropz_Bodies found themselves into the middle of a Reddit sh*tstorm, as people jumped to accuse the player of cheating to secure the win.
A Reddit user named Sora26 questioned the victory in a 2000 word post which claimed a third-party stat-tracking website showed iDrop_Bodies’ kill to death ratio jumping from 4.5 to 7 as soon as they joined the second week of the Summer Skirmish.
iDrop_Bodies was accused of coordinated kill-feeding, a tactic which involves creating new accounts and syncing matchmaking queues. The player was also accused of exiting matches before gamers dropped, allowing for a better bus route to be found.
The Reddit post got a lot of attention, with the prize winner facing a huge backlash as people jumped on board with Sora26’s claims.
The situation got so bad that Epic Games stepped in offering its own view on the prize winner. In its own Reddit post it denied any allegations of cheating, and posted the algorithm for the Summer Skirmish.
Epic Games wrote: “Our internal Summer Skirmish analytics kept track of all opponents which participants eliminated.
“iDroPz_BoDiEs had 129 eliminations during the event and every single elimination was on a different opponent. This is not indicative of him having been intentionally fed eliminations and/or collusion with other players.”
Epic went on to add: “Stat tracking sites are unreliable for recording historic performance, as they only update when the website requests stats for a user from the API.
“This makes any ‘Most Eliminations in a Single Match’ records on an account unlikely to be correct, as multiple matches in a time period are combined into one update. iDroPz_BoDiEs has achieved more than 20 eliminations in a match multiple times across his Fortnite career.”
Sora26 has since apologised for the cheating claims, and Epic confirmed its support for its many, many fans, stating: “Our primary goal is to support competition that is fun, inclusive, and in line with the overall spirit of Fortnite. Unsportsmanlike conduct from participants is not within that spirit, and will not be tolerated in Fortnite competition.”