They created an army of 20,000 bots to trick Epic Games. The company is going to court

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Bots messing with Fortnite Island popularity stats have landed some “clever” players in court.

Epic Games is quick to sue people who try to gain an unfair advantage in their games. Two Fortnite players, Idris Nahdi and Ayob Nasser, learned this the hard way when they attempted to make money by exploiting a feature of the popular battle royale game.

Bots, Islands and money

Given Tim Sweeney’s vision for the metaverse, it’s no surprise Epic Games strongly supports player creativity. A key part of this is their Island system, where fans design and build their own maps. Epic Games has not only made these tools easy to use but also financially rewards the creators of the most successful Islands.

This isn’t just a token gesture. According to a recent lawsuit, Epic Games actually pays creators of popular *Fortnite* Islands “millions of dollars” each year. However, two players who fell out of favor with the company were found to have fraudulently increased the player counts on their maps using automated bots, as reported by Polygon (via PC Gamer).

EG estimates that nearly all visitors to Basser and Nahdi’s Islands – between 88% and 99% – were automated bots. Between December 2024 and February 2025, the two players responsible had around 20,000 of these AI-controlled bots working for them.

The defendants used automated accounts to interact with their own creations within the game Fortnite. They accessed the game remotely through a cloud gaming service. To hide their activities, they collaborated to build several different virtual worlds, spreading the artificial engagement across multiple accounts and locations.

Epic Games intended to award players a significant amount of money, but discovered a fraud before the payments went through. The company then demanded that those caught cheating in *Fortnite* immediately stop playing and delete all copies of the game they owned.

As expected, the two individuals ignored the developer’s warning, leading to a lawsuit. Epic Games is now trying to get their money back and prevent the individuals from creating new Epic accounts. They’re even asking the court to apply this ban to anyone who might inherit or take over their accounts in the future. While this last request seems far-fetched, it could discourage others from trying similar tactics.

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2025-10-10 11:02