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Two Fortnite players are being sued by the game’s developer, Epic Games, for allegedly using 20,000 bots to get paid tens of thousands of dollars. The lawsuit, filed this week, claims they used the bots to inflate the popularity of the maps they created, thus earning them real money from the game’s “Island Creator” program.
The two men, Idris Nahdi and Ayob Nasser from Michigan, allegedly created over 20,000 bots to “play” using their 10 island maps between December 2024 and February 2025, according to Epic Games’ lawsuit. The company also claims that while their Fortnite maps did have actual human players use them, they believe between 88% and 99% of the engagement on their maps was fraudulent.
“Defendants programmed the bot accounts to engage with Defendants’ own Fortnite Islands by using a cloud gaming service that allows users to play video games, like Fortnite, remotely. Defendants worked together to create multiple Islands in an attempt to disguise their scheme by spreading the fake engagement across multiple developer accounts and Islands,” Epic Games claims in the lawsuit.
“Before they got caught, Defendants were paid tens of thousands of dollars in payments from Epic that would otherwise have been paid out to other developers who earned genuine engagement from real Fortnite players,” Epic also claimed in the suit.
When Epic Games caught on to the scam, the company stopped sending them payments and all of the bots vanished. Epic also ordered the Nahdi and Nasser to stop playing the game and “destroy all copies of Fortnite.” They allegedly didn’t, thus the lawsuit.
Epic Games wants the defendants, and their heirs, banned forever
According to Polygon, Epic Games is asking for the money they paid the two men to be returned, and for them to be prohibited from creating accounts and downloading or playing Fortnite in the future. They are also, in a very unique move, asking that these bans be placed on the defendants’ “heirs [and] successors.”
“Developers trust that the time spent creating Islands will be rewarded in accordance with the Engagement Program Payout Terms, and based on how real players engage with the Islands,” Epic said in the lawsuit. “Defendants’ conduct undermines Epic’s relationship with developers, however, depriving legitimate developers of the full share of funds they otherwise would have received and eroding the trust Epic has built with them.”