One way to quickly kill off a game’s playerbase before it even has a chance to grow is to kill off ways for gamers to have fun. Epic Games decided to enact this measure as part of the rules for their new Battle Royale mode for the build-and-shoot multiplayer game, Fortnite.
The Battle Royale mode recently entered into beta besting, and it’s a typical 100 player elimination mode based on games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Epic recently announced via a forum post that they have been and will continue to ban players who use teamwork or are teaming up together in the Battle Royale mode, with Mooney the community manager writing in a post published on September 15th, 2017…
“Last week, we launched Fornite Battle Royale and since then have seen consistent reports of players teaming up. We plan to take teaming very seriously and have already banned some players!
“This type of behavior is CHEATING and a BANNABLE offense (MOTD), […]”
It is true that teaming up with other players and utilizing teamwork in the Battle Royale mode is considered a bannable offense in the code of conduct. The page on the code of conduct explains…
“Play fairly and within the rules of the game. Don’t cheat, AFK, grief, exploit bugs or glitches, team up in groups larger than the game mode allows (e.g. in solo matches do not work with other players, respectfully kill them instead) or impersonate others.”
“Respectfully kill” other players? Right.
Players quite naturally took umbrage with the fact that they were being forced to play the mode only in a specific way. Some protested by saying that even in the movie Battle Royale and in other games players team up all the time in order to win a match.
Mooney noted, however, that there will be a separate mode for Battle Royale that will allow players to team up, saying…
“Squads are coming soon, and we are hustling to get that in ASAP for you!
“Be apart of the solution, not the problem. You can report teaming/cheating players by contacting our Player Support team.”
Other players also rightly pointed out that Fortnite won’t maintain a playerbase for long if people keep getting banned for trivial things like teaming up. However, there are some who are strictly against teaming and agree with Epic, even making threads on the Fortnite sub-Reddit to expose teammers and report them in order to get their accounts banned. User darkveil explains…
“Epic has a strict stance against cheating. We’ve already begun to issue bans for for confirmed teamers in Fortnite Battle Royale. Please keep reporting unfair activity as you see it.”
Other games have also taken strict stances against the way people team up, kill, or play the game outside of the terms set by the publisher. For instance, Ubisoft last year began cracking down on people who abused friendly fire in Rainbow Six: Siege, as reported by GameRanx.
Teaming and stream-sniping were also issues that greatly affected the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds community as well, which was detailed by Pretty Good Gaming.
It’s kind of weird seeing seeing these strict applications of rules being applied to these sandbox-style games, especially when the goal is to simply be the last one standing. Forcing people not to play as teams in solo mode for some arbitrary reason such as “cheating” looks absolutely silly.
Nevertheless, for people who enjoy playing under such authoritarian rule-sets, you’ll likely find yourself right at home with Fortnite and its new Battle Royale mode. I can only imagine that in the next squad update they’ll force players to meet diversity quotas on the teams otherwise they’ll be in violation of discrimination.
Fortnite is available right now in its beta form on PS4, Xbox One and PC.
(Thanks for the news tip Kyle)
