The developer of Fortnite Epic Games has found itself in legal hot water.
As reported by Polygon, the studio has been filing lawsuits against people found cheating within the game, with one of them turning out to be a minor. The mother of a 14-year-old boy – Caleb Rogers – has released a legal note to Epic Games in which she argues that Epic failed to legally bind underage users in its EULA.
“This company is in the process of attempting to sue a 14-year old child,” she said.
“They are claiming he prepared derivative works based upon a copyrighted work and publicly performed and displayed this as such. They are also claiming he ‘modified their game’ to use a cheat and live streamed it. This would, of course, fall under the Copyright Act if he did in-fact modify their game.”
“Epic Games Inc failed to legally bind underage users with their EULA agreement,” Lauren Rogers said, “which is a contract between the licensor and purchaser, establishing the purchasers right to use the software. This being said, the game itself was in-fact free. No purchase of said game occurred.”
Epic's argument for suing these uses is that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, users creating cheats were in the wrong as it uses Epic's own IP.
While not legal trouble, Epic has also found itself in a spot of bother with Playerunknown's Battlegrounds maker Bluehole/PUBG Inc over the creation of its battle royale mode in Fortnite.