Zennon, a Fortnite player who is only 9 years old found himself banned from the game for 1,460 days which rounds up close to 4 years.
Fortnite is one of the most popular battle royale game developed by Epic Games. Within the game, players are dropped into a location on the map of their choice, on their own or with a team as chosen by the player alongside other 99 players. After making it to the ground, players go around to pick up as many weapons and items possible while heading to the centre of the map as it gets smaller every few mins. The last player to survive wins the match.
Thanks to Epic Games and the players have ample opportunities to make money off it. In 2019, Kyle Giersdorf, widely known as ”Bugha” took home $3 million for winning Fortnite World Cup which happened at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York.
Unfortunately, being involved in a competitive scenario with cash prizes Epic Games have age restrictions of the player to be at least 13 years old or beyond. Although, competitive matches with cash prizes or not, playing competitive still need permissions from their parents to play, which leads us to the current situation of Zenon.
Zenon received a ban for 1,460 days which rounds up close to 4 years, meaning he won’t be able to play from his primary account until he is 13 years old of his age.
It was a casual day of Zenon playing some matches in Arena Mode, to note down, it is the competitive game type that doesn’t include any cash prizes in reward and for a fact, the player did have permission from his father to play but rules are rules for Epic Games. The moment took place live on stream while his dad was right next to him when the game informed him of the ban and it led him straight bursting out into tears.
Not long ago, Zenon received a ban for playing Cash Cups only some days before the current affair and since then he was following the rules – and also this time, his ban of 4 years is not just fair considering he didn’t break any rules.
This situation cause to the birth of ”FreeZenon” hashtag on Twitter by fellow Fortnite fans. Within the first twelve hours itself, the hashtag is been included over 91,000 tweets already. Most of the fans are calling out that Zenon doesn’t deserve such a drastic whole four years ban, considering he didn’t even cross the line while professional players XXiF and Ronaldo only had a ban for two weeks as they broke all the barriers and were found cheating at a major event. In comparison, the dramatic ban that Zenon received as a punishment is just not wise. If not to lift Zenon’s ban, they are expecting Epic Games to at least shorten the duration to something bearable.
There’s no official word from Epic Games yet, all the fellow fans can do is have fingers crossed for the time being and hope Epic Games to reconsider the situation resulting into a positive conclusion for all of us.
