Fortnite cheaters qualify for World Cup

Throughout the Fortnite World Cup, cheating has remained a pretty constant problem. It has really been a problem with most Epic tournaments. In the first week alone Epic banned masses of players and retook a fair chunk of prize money after determining cheating had occurred. The ongoing drama between Tfue and FaZe has drowned concerns out recently, but cheating has once again reared its head in the competitive community. A pair of players previously banned from the game for cheating during the World Cup have since managed to qualify for the tournament’s finals.

Players XXIF and Ronaldo were caught cheating in the early qualifying rounds of the tournament. They had their prizes taken back and were barred from competing in the game for a while. At the time, a lot of players didn’t think this a heavy enough punishment. They may have been right given this week’s events.

Their ban only lasted for two weeks. The Fortnite World Cup Qualifiers are coming to an end, but it has lasted long enough for XXIF and Ronaldo to wait out their ban. Having served their sentence, they were free to re-enter the tournament hopefully rehabilitated. In their first weekend of competition since their ban, XXIF has managed to qualify for a spot in the World Cup finals.

The reaction to this has taken issue with this turn of events for two main reasons. The first is that some people believe the ban should have disqualified the high-profile cheaters from the entire tournament. This line of argument is that while each week’s qualifying rounds are treated separately, they are part of one tournament and being caught cheating should mean disqualification from the whole tournament. The other is that they might have cheated again this time.

Did XXIF qualify legitimately?

Despite their two-week ban, many fans believe they’ve found evidence that XXIF again cheated to gain access to the tournament.

This times clips seem more circumstantial than those presented last time around. While XXIF might deserve the benefit of the doubt, it is suspicious to some players. The reaction from professional players has been just as negative.

A cheater qualifying for a $30,000,000 tournament is a kick in the junk to the integrity of the Fortnite competitive community. Love or hate the game, this should be unanimously agreed upon. — DrLupo (@DrLupo) June 2, 2019

DrLupo later expanded on this in a Twitch stream, where he questioned why players as good as these two would feel to cheat when they are clearly skilled enough to win on their own merit. Tfue also found time outside of his ongoing lawsuit to weigh in the situation. He joked during a recent stream that was going to start landing in the same spot since it was where bots always landed for free kills.

With such a high-profile history of cheating, it is almost guaranteed that Epic will be reviewing the games played to check for any further evidence of cheating. If XXIF managed to qualify on the back of his actual talent despite some poor choices earlier in the tournament, then nothing has really been done wrong. Although, many players and fans might still find it a little strange that known cheaters were allowed to continue playing in a tournament after disqualification and end up attending the finals in New York.