Fortnite: Epic Games Invalidates Box Fight Tournament Results Due To A Scoring Exploit

A scoring exploit led to the cancellation of Fortnite’s first Box Fight tournament.

Epic Games announced that players exploited a scoring error during yesterday's Fortnite Wild Wednesday Box Fight tournament. As a result, the tournament results are no longer valid, and no players within the money will receive a payout. That means box fighters like Benjy “benjyfishy” Fish and NA East winner Joji have nothing to show for their efforts. Many competitors who took part in Wild Wednesday identified the scoring exploit during the tournament. However, Epic Games waited nearly a full 24 hours to inform competitive players. The competition will take place at a later date, according to the @FNCompetitive Twitter account.

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Epic Invalidates Results

Due to a bug, there was an scoring exploit in the Box Fight Tournament yesterday. The tournament scoring was compromised so we are invalidating the results. When the mode is ready, we'll run another Box Fight Tournament.

— Fortnite Competitive (@FNCompetitive) October 29, 2020

The tweet from Epic Games came through mere hours before the Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) Heats began in the European region. Knowing the competitive Fortnite scene, players did not take the news very well.

“Due to a bug, there was a scoring exploit in the Box Fight Tournament yesterday. The tournament scoring was compromised so we are invalidating the results. When the mode is ready, we'll run another Box Fight Tournament.”

We've seen similar situations in the past with Epic Games. They often cancel tournaments when players capitalize on a scoring bug, which is not out of the norm. However, the time it took the developers to relay this information is a bit concerning in this case. Several players, including benjyfishy, identified the scoring exploit yesterday during the tournament.

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Benjy Identifies the Scoring Exploit

there is a bug in wild wednesday where if you leave just as you lose then the loss didnt count 😀idk how many people have used it but there is prob alot of people in top 20 that abused it hopefully they fix before NA pic.twitter.com/9FhSOQnx8n

— benjyfishy (@benjyfishy) October 28, 2020

Benjy highlighted this exploit in a tweet, including screenshots. It seems that Benjy encountered an opponent who already reached 35 points but was down 3-0 to him during their match. Benjy's opponent left quick enough and did not receive a loss on his record. It was clear that some competitors who queued into Wild Wednesday found a way to elevate their scores.

“there is a bug in wild wednesday where if you leave just as you lose then the loss didnt count idk how many people have used it but there is prob alot of people in top 20 that abused it hopefully they fix before NA,” said benjyfishy on Twitter. Players caught wind of this and abused it, resulting in a logjam and several ties atop the leaderboard. Nevertheless, Benjy finished in sixth place and stood to earn $1.8K USD. Epic announced the scoring exploit news the following day and nullified any tournament results and earnings.

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I 100% don’t deserve to be payed out at all, this is fully understandable, obvi it sucks but I feel bad for the people that got top 15 legitimately. I don’t think a tiebreaker should ever be by a “epic Id” it ruins the competitiveness of the tournament and makes it depend on luck https://t.co/kIZ0xVBMk8

— Joji (@jojiFN) October 29, 2020

NA East pro – Joji – won his region's Box Fight tournament and received the news from multiple sources. He took a more novel and respectable approach than most. He stated, “I 100% don't deserve to be paid out at all, this is fully understandable, obvi it sucks but I feel bad for the people that got top 15 legitimately. I don't think a tiebreaker should ever be by an ‘epic Id' it ruins the competitiveness of the tournament and makes it depend on luck.” He conceded the $3K USD he would've won in favor of a better system than for Wild Wednesday Box Fights. It's never enjoyable to watch players lose out on legitimate earnings due to these unfortunate scoring errors. Hopefully, Epic Games can identify these issues earlier in the process and act accordingly, moving forward.