In a rather unfortunate turn of events, Fortnite's Duo World Champion Aqua was banned from Fortnite for 14 days. What the hell happened?
The incident occurred in week three of the Fortnite Champion Series: Chapter 2, Season 4 qualifying tournaments. The Fortnite Champion Series is a trio tournament where the winner receives the championship title for his region. Both Aqua's Team, where he plays with Noahreyli and Rezon, and Benjyfishy's team, which consists of him, MrSavage and LeTsHe, are known to end up in Doom's Domain quite often, where they also dueled on weekends.
After the tournament, however, Epic Games suddenly banned Aqua and his trio teammates for 14 days. So, he will not be qualified for the FNCS Heats, nor for the Grand Finals at the end of this season.
nice reason epic ! pic.twitter.com/ngwUvFUyqn
— COOLER aqua (@aquaa) October 25, 2020
What Happened?
Both trios have been landing regularly at the same POI - Doom's Domain, for the last weeks and have been fighting relentlessly against each other. However, the controversy over the weekend led to accusations of stream sniping and intentional disconnections by Aqua.
The rule violation in question refers to Aqua's actions during one of the encounters of his trio with Benjyfishy's team. After being eliminated by his rival trio, Aqua left the game claiming that Fortnite had crashed.
MrSavage and his teammates were not convinced and claimed that Aqua deliberately left the game to avoid a shakedown. The shakedown would have revealed the whereabouts of Aqua's teammates. Benjy proved the claim by checking his friends list and seeing that Aqua was in the lobby, making it unlikely that Aqua's game had crashed.
In addition, Aqua dropped his loot immediately after his elimination, which should not be the case if the game crashed. On top of that, both Aqua and Rezon were in MrSavage's stream during the encounter with the opposing trio.
Later, Aqua and his mates received a message revealing to them that they are banned from Fortnite for 14 days.
The Reason for the Ban
While it is quite difficult to prove the allegation of stream sniping, quitting the game before a death is against FNCS rules. Rule 8.2 explicitly mentions that "deliberately disconnecting from a game without legitimate reason" can lead to disciplinary action against the team. However, this was not the only reason for the ban. Aqua confirmed that Epic banned him because of his behavior in connection with the fiasco that happened on Twitter. Aqua made a statement about his organization's Twitter account:
In the last hour, Epic Games has provided me with a justification for the 14-day ban. The ban was imposed not because I left the game, but because two of my tweets violated their rules. This was completely unexpected, as I was only making short jokes and was not aware of how severe the penalty for a tweet could be compared to leaving the game"
— COOLER aqua (@aquaa) October 25, 2020
What Does This Ban Mean for Aqua?
Due to his 14-day ban, Aqua will not participate in the FNCS Heats or the Grand Finals. In addition, he will not be able to participate in competitive tournaments, which would exclude him from DreamHack events, Cash Cups, Wild Wednesdays, or any other third-party tournaments for the next two weeks. Aqua will also not be able to play Arena Mode due to recent disciplinary issues.
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Original article by EarlyGame's Alisa Eiber.
