Zenon is a 9-year-old Brazilian Fortnite player and streamer on Twitch. The boy dedicates himself to grow more every day as a professional gamer. On his recent livestream, Zenon received a 1460 day ban from Fortnite that broke his heart. More of the story below.
Fortnite is now one of the most popular BR games introduced by Epic Games. Players will choose a landing location on the map and drop there to compete with 99 other players. After reaching the ground, players spread out looking for loot, weapons, armor, and items to assist their fights. On top of that, they have to constantly move as the map shrinks into smaller circles every few mins. The last to survive wins the match.
Thanks to the popularity of the game, Epic Games and players can now earn money off it. The champion of the 2019 Fornite World Cup, Kyle Giersdorf - better known as ”Bugha” - took home $3 million. The gigantic tournament is held at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City.
However, being involved with competitive events that give cash prices, Epic Games have to put age restrictions as required by law. The player must be 13 years old or beyond to join these events. In addition, whether playing competitively with money in mind or not, participants still have to ask for their parents’ permission. This leads us to the situation of Zenon.
Zenon recently received a 1,460 days ban which rounds up close to 4 years. It means that he won’t be able to play from his primary Fornite account until reaching 13 years of age.
It was a normal day for Zenon, logging onto Fornite to play some Arena Mode matches. For your information, it is a competitive mode that doesn’t generate any money in reward. In fact, Zenon did have permission from his father to play. But rules are rules. The moment took place on livestream: the game informed him of the ban from Epic Games and he immediately burst into tears.
Not long before this incident, Zenon also received a ban for playing Cash Cups. Since then, he had been strictly following the rules. His recent 4 years ban seems not fair considering the fact he didn’t break any Epic Games’ principles.
Zenon’s story quickly shared on Twitter by fellow Fornite players with the hashtag “FreeZenon”. The hashtag generated over 91,000 tweets after just twelve hours. Most of them claim that Zenon doesn’t deserve such a drastic of a ban, especially when he didn’t cross any lines. Previously, professional players by the name of “XXiF” and “Ronaldo” broke the Fornite’s rules and cheated at a major event. They only receive a two weeks ban for doing so. Compared to that, Zenon’s punishment is too harsh. The Fortnite community is asking Epic Games to at least shorten the duration if not lifting it permanently.
The official response is yet to be announced by Epic Games. All the fellow fans can do now is have fingers crossed and hope for the best solution for the kid player from the company.