Epic Games CEO Takes A Shot At Exchanges Over Fake Fortnite Token

Epic Games CEO took a shot at exchanges over fake Fortnite tokens, especially aiming at PancakeSwap which enabled trading of the unauthorized token so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

The Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny called out several crypto exchanges for enabling unofficial and unauthorized crypto bearing the Fortnite name. This is a popular Battle Royale shooter game that was first released in 2017 and now has more than 350 million registered users across the world. Sweeny wrote:

“There isn’t a Fortnite cryptocurrency. The Twitter accounts promoting such a thing are a scam. Epic’s lawyers are on it. Also, shame on the cryptocurrency marketplaces that enable this kind of thing.”

Sweeny is referring to the Fortnite Token which is trading on SushiSwap, CronaSwap, and PancakeSwap. New research for the scam token on the exchanges doesn’t return any results but these decentralzied exchanges enable their users to trade any token so long as those users input the token’s contract address. Sweeny wrote:

“This account is operating a scam. Anybody involved in this is being scammed.”

The Twitter account behind the Fortnite token tried to argue that it wasn’t a scam despite the CEO stating it plenty of times. The Token’s account responded:

“This is a fair-launch, community-driven, Fortnite game fans-created cryptocurrency project with no specified owner or company structure behind it or a CEO deciding on its future.”

Sweeney wasn’t really happy and he replied:

“You can’t use the Fortnite name and images without permission to market an unrelated product.”

The scammers also encouraged Fortnite fans to mint NFTs with their tokens which Sweeny called a scam. According to the Nomics data, it seems that a few are trading the FNT token and since January, the token is down 96% from the ATH and is worth nearly zero. In the past day, the token has only seen about $250 in total volume traded. This, however, is not the first time malicious actors used Fortnite’s branding without Epic’s consent, and back in October, the reports surfaced that the scammers were promising gamers that they can exchange V-Bucks which is the non-crypto token for the game for dollars using the unauthorized Fortnite coin.

While Epic Games doesn’t have any Fortnite-related crypto, the company is leaning into Web3 and Gala Games’ upcoming gRIT release, featuring NFTs, which will be the first blockchain game to be released on the store. NFTs are unique tokens that are used to show ownership over digital assets like in-game items. Sweeny shared however that Epic Games is not touching NFTs as the whole field is tangled up with a mix of scams and today, he clarified this position:

“When new technology emerges, some put it to good use, and others put it to bad use. It would be terribly shortsighted to ban an entire field of technology for such a reason.”