Posted by Suraj A. Vyas | 2 minute read
As an avid gamer, I hate when I'm heavily invested in a game and someone decides to post spoilers for the game online without any warnings mere hours after it releases (or worse: Before the game is even released). Whether it's a cool weapon unlock or the emotional twist in a story-drive video game, I don't want to know anything about it until I experience it myself. On the rare occasion I get spoiled, the most I do is grumble to myself. Epic Games, Inc., the developer and publisher of Fortnite®, is not me.
Epic went ahead and sued a man by the name of Thomas Hannah for breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, and civil conspiracy. They are seeking injunctive relief, compensatory damages, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees. Thomas Hannah was a contractor that provided QA (Quality Assurance) services for Epic by playing unreleased builds of the game and reporting back about various bugs and data. Thomas Hannah also signed an NDA (Nondisclosure Agreement) agreeing not to reveal any confidential information he would receive as a part of his QA services. However, Hannah allegedly breached the NDA by leaking spoilers to another man (Adam DiMarco) who then posted the spoilers and leaked the future of Fortnite on Reddit for upcoming seasons.
I wouldn't say Fortnite's Battle Royale mode has a riveting story by any stretch of the imagination, but there's no argument that when the inkling of a new secret is discovered, the whole community bands together to try and crack the mystery. That’s exactly what Epic stated. Hannah’s leaks ruined tons of buzz Fortnite would get from people in the community posting about secrets hidden away in the game online. Frankly, if everything turns out to be true, he did. Gaming secrets are huge nowadays for ensuring people remain engaged in a game’s ecosystem. When people stay in an ecosystem, they spend more in an ecosystem. It would be interesting to see how this all plays out and how damages will really be calculated, but more likely than not, this will settle out of court and we’ll never really know exactly how everything went down.
Currently in Fortnite, something fishy is going on with the cube and all these rifts and if I worked at Epic, I’d think twice about trying to spoil Season 6 in exchange for a few thousand upvotes on Reddit.
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