It’s been a tough day for Epic Games. Accusations have been thrown around left and right—first, popular streamer Ninja was targeted for his frivolous use of the game’s report system, then the company itself for blindly banning the reported player, and then the reported player for faking the whole thing and using it to drum up publicity. Confused, harassed, upset, and frankly, tired of the whole Fortnite thing, Epic Games has made the shocking decision to ban their entire player base in one go.

“Frankly, we’re more disappointed than anything else,” confessed a disheveled and baggy-eyed spokesperson, Tim Sweeney, at the Epic Games emergency press conference. “At first we just thought Ninja did something stupid again, but hey—the guy could literally stream himself flossing over a burning Quran and the twelve-year-olds would keep watching, so we figured it was nothing to worry about.”

“But then it kept going, and going, and now those same people that were shit-talking Ninja are screaming for the blood of someone named Chera. And the whole thing was our fault and not our fault and then a total hoax, and everyone had moved on.” At this point, Sweeney paused, took a deep breath, and continued. “I mean, frankly, it scared the shit out of us. Look how easy it was to make an angry mob out of you people: One popular thread and you’re ready to unsub from your favorite streamer. Two thousand V-Bucks and we’re the greatest company in the world.”

“To be clear, we here at Epic Games think that Ninja is a piece of shit. We don’t like him. He’s gotten way too famous way too fast, and he acts like an arrogant prick ninety-five percent of the time. But… he didn’t deserve this. All you needed was an excuse, a single unproven accusation, and you were dragging his name through the dirt. Remember how he almost dropped the N-bomb a few months ago? Don’t you think that’s a better reason to stop watching the guy?”

Here Sweeney paused again, taking a sip of water. Through the stifling silence, almost inaudibly, someone in the crowd muttered something about Tilted Towers.

“So we’re banning all of you guys,” he continues, finally. “Fuck it. You’ve all been acting like a bunch of real assholes. And I know you’ll just move on, into Realm Royale or CoD Blackout or whatever fucking game is ripping us off the best, and you’ll keep raising up and tearing down your false idols so you can fill that gaping hole in your heart. That’s par for the course, these days. But at least you won’t get the satisfaction of dancing our stupid fucking dances.”

“Also, we’re releasing a new shotgun. It has bullets, or something.”