Why Did Kona Cheat In The FNCS Qualifiers?

For the past few months, talk has been circulating around the Fortnite community that the game is dying. With popular titles like VALORANT, Warzone, and Apex Legends dominating the scene at the moment, users are questioning whether the game is going to stagnate and drop off or if it will climb back up to its former height in popularity.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for this discourse amongst Fortnite's users are the major holes in the anti-cheat system. With the rise of new technology have come new hacks and cheat programs that allow cheaters to prosper. This has made competitive matches irritating for professionals, as their skill is no match for automatic headshots and enhanced aim assist.

Cheating has been mostly swept under the rug, as Epic Games has pushed out new updates that have distracted some fans from the underlying issues cheating brings. The Joyride Update and Season 3 only took the attention away from cheating for a while, though, as a player decided to take the matter into his own hands. This brought the security issues in Epic Games' anti-cheat system to the developer's attention almost immediately, and the Fortnite community has been abuzz ever since.

It is no secret that the highly-anticipated Fortnite Competitive Series, abbreviated as FNCS, is taking place now and until the end of August. The competition attracts big-name Fortnite professionals, like Bugha and Benjyfishy, but also allows for newer competitors to rise up the ranks. With a huge prize pool, there is a lot of motivation to enter the competition and win.

Despite that most players strive to rise up the ranks naturally, climbing the professional ladder as their skill increases, some aspire to cheat. Fortnite's anti-cheat system is supposed to bar most of these cheaters from hacking the game, kicking them from matches if they do. This expensive system is in place so that players can't take advantage of others who are fairly trying to master it.

Fortnite's anti-cheat system apparently has some enormous loopholes, however, as users have learned how to bypass it, allowing them to manipulate tournament results in their favour. This has flown under the radar for months on end, as Epic Games have been working on pushing out updates for fans of the game.

While cheaters have been getting away with breaking the game to win, professionals, such as Waffles, have been getting banned for game-breaking glitches that they could not control. Last week's FNCS qualifiers oversaw the ban of professional Fortnite player Waffles, who experienced the infinite items bug during the competition, which allowed him to carry an infinite amount of items in his inventory during the match.

Despite Waffles not being able to control this glitch nor make it go away, he was banned. He anxiously emailed Epic Games, hoping they would appeal his ban, to which they refused. This spawned the hashtag #FreeWaffles, to which Epic responded to after it gained trending status. Waffles was unbanned, but only after the unfair accusations of cheating were brought to the public eye. Had he not shown the screenshots detailing his ban, Waffles might not have been unbanned.

With all of this going on, fans thought that Epic Games would look over their faulty anti-cheat system, which they did not. Epic ignored the problem, which outraged fans, as the anti-cheat system seemed to affect players that were honestly playing the game and turn a blind eye to the actual cheaters. This is why, during this week's instalment of the FNCS Qualifiers, a player took matters into his own hands and brought these blatant flaws to light in front of a massive audience.

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Self-proclaimed Fortnite professional Kona was relatively unknown in the Fortnite scene before he thrust the spotlight on himself to help Epic Games crackdown on cheating. A former member of Team Deny, fifteen-year-old Kona decided to participate in the NA-West FNCS Qualifiers, where he seemed to be doing well... Almost too well. People began noticing immediately that this young player was almost too good at the game. After being eliminated by Kona in matches, professionals and competitors alike were suspecting him of cheating. It was pretty easy to see why - Kona could shoot through builds, had a picture-perfect aim, and seemed to have extremely good luck in drops.

These accusations remained just tha t- accusations - as Kona rose through the ranks of the Qualifiers, seeming to possess unnatural skill. This should have alerted the moderators overseeing the match, or at least triggered the anti-cheat system, but it did not. Kona continued to be allowed to participate in the match.

Kona wasn't in the tournament, to win, it turned out. He was in it to make a point. A point that he very clearly made when he started up a Twitch stream mid-tournament. The stream showcased his very blatant cheating software on-screen, which allowed him to have enhanced aim assist, automatic headshots, control over loot, and no bloom/RNG, among other things.

This explained his near-perfect performance in-game - the question was, how was this allowed by the anti-cheat system? Players thought that in such a big official tournament, this type of behaviour would not be tolerated, but somehow it still managed to seep through the cracks.

Kona took to Twitter to discuss how ridiculous it was that his very obvious cheating tactics went undetected in the tournament, even allowing him to dominate the qualifiers and make it to the Grand Finals.

He even eliminated 100 Thieves player Arkham effortlessly, taking to Twitter to showcase his too-perfect play.

It was at this point that professionals and fans alike started trying to signal Epic Games, reposting screenshots of the Twitch stream that showcased his hack. Shortly after this, Epic Games banned Kona from Fortnite, but his damage on the NA West Qualifiers had already been done.

After his subsequent ban, Kona took to Twitter to answer questions from other players and comment on the situation. He stated that had he not outright revealed himself on Twitch and Twitter, he probably would have made it to the Finals. He also stated that his account's ban was a "necessary sacrifice" to help bring the issue to Epic Games' attention.

He even took on interviews with other players, such as NRG Ronaldo, Clix, and thedenverguy, to bring light to the situation.

These interviews revealed that Kona had not massively hacked the game to perform these cheats. The only thing he had done was purchase a cheating tool for $11, take 5 minutes to make sure the cheats bypassed Fortnite's anti-cheat system, and then enter the FNCS Qualifiers. According to the cheat's website, which was revealed in DMs with Kona, over 11,000 people have downloaded it. To discourage cheating, the name of the site was not disclosed by those that interviewed him, as they wish to put an end to cheating, not provide free advertising for the fraudulent program.

After his interview with Kona, NRG Ronaldo continued to riff on the holes in Fortnite's anti-cheat system, stating that it blocked people for using the name "softaim" in their name, but not for using it in-game.

Professionals and players alike are frustrated that all it seems to take to "get good" at Fortnite is $11 and a hack, which is entirely okay according to Fortnite's anti-cheat system. All the hard work that professionals have put into crafting their technique and building skills seems to be all for nothing, as cheaters can prosper and only get caught if they out themselves publicly as Kona did.

As of this article's publication, no statement has been made by Epic regarding this matter, but players are unsure of what they could even do to rectify the situation at this point. Serious work needs to be done to ensure the game remains fun and fair for all, and the anti-cheat system desperately needs to be repaired to keep professionals interested in the game. Kona's $11 stunt is proof that Epic needs to take cheating more seriously. If they do not tweak their system, players might start moving away from the game as cheaters continue to win and honest players get unfairly accused.

 

Images via Epic Games | Twitch