Epic Sues User Experience Tester For Leaking Fortnite Chapter 2

What surprise ?
Everybody and their grandmother knew Fortnite was not kill.

And the "revelation"of being able to swim is so momentous and game changing it needs to have legal ramifications.

Maybe Epic is seeing what Bethesda is doing, in the most disliked company stakes and wants somebody to hold their beer.

On one hand, it kinda serves him right for knowingly breaking an NDA. On the other hand, it wasn't a big secret, so Epic might be pushing it a bit too far.

So just fire him? Do you really need to sue this guy.

He broke his NDA seems very clear cut to me. I doubt they really go anywhere with this, at least anything further than simply using this as a scare tactic.

I don't care one bit about Fortnite.
Having said that, I hope the guy gets what's coming to him.
He promised contractually not to spoil something and then he spoiled it. His own fault.

Looks like they are making an example of him for leaking their info. Lucky for him it's just Epic and not the Nintendo ninjas.

@607jf Is he even an employee? It sounds like he was just a user that got the chance to test the expansion, in which case they can’t fire someone that doesn’t work for them.

Edit: yeah I’ve scanned the lawsuit, nowhere is he stated to be an employee, he was one person in a large group of users in North Carolina that got to test the new update. So he doesn’t work for them, they can’t fire him from anything. He signed an NDA though, they have every right to pursue legal action. After all, if they didn’t, their NDAs would be meaningless, there’d be no repercussions for breaking them and therefore every tester may as well reveal the company’s plans.

Man... The agreements you sign about proprietary info, content, and corporate espionage at hiring spell that stuff out, set a very serious tone. Makes me wonder if they were ignorant or brazen with it. The company i worked for had repetitive mandatory meetings every year discussing this stuff, and things to be aware of on & off the jobsite at all times.

Good. I don’t like Fortnite but like... this genius signed a contract and promptly broke it. Actions have consequences.

Then maybe all companies in the industry should start sueing ppl left and right? Because everything today "leaks" beforehand.
I mean look at Blizzard. Blizzcon is just a week away and they've already been multiple reports on Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. There's even a certain Twitter user that went live on his Twitch streaming channel spoiling Overwatch 2 and even some it's features.
What should Blizzard do then in this situation?

You do not break a NDA and not expect to be sued. I don't know the details of this specific NDA but I have signed a couple when at job interviews. The consequenses for breaking it are normally listed in the NDA. So, Sykes signed something most likely knowing he will be sued. His five minutes of fame are going to come with a large price tag.

Fair enough. It goes against the very principles of being a tester by breaking this NDA. Dunno what they were really expecting.

He made the biggest mistake of communicating with another person with his main Twitter account, if his intention was leaking the new chapter he should have thought twice hiding his identity at all cost. Still that's a risky move when you deal with big companies because if you get caught, the punishment could be really painful.

@KitsuneNight it doesn't matter if what he leaked was not huge, he signed a legal document, an NDA and then broke it. That right there deserves to have legal consequences.

@Syndrome the difference is this guy signed a legal document stating he would keep his mouth shut, and then revealed everything he did. So it's not just them doing it just because, he literally broke an NDA

@Ragdoll72 Ok, that makes sense.

He signed an NDA.

That's literally the only thing that's important. He legally told Epic Games that he would not disclose the information about the game. He did. So Epic sues.

I often try to beta test games, and when there is an NDA involved I either don't sign up or will make a mental note never to reveal anything.

Personally, I hate leaks and leakers.

They get their 5 minutes of fame and ruin the surprise for the rest of us.

People are so impatient and like leaks because they can’t control themselves. It is stupid.

If he signed an NDA then it is his own fault. You can’t just break a contract and have no consequences. People need to understand that. Make and example of him and let’s hope these leaks reduce.

What a shame. Now when it releases all the 12 year old kids who play it won't have the chance to be utterly blown away with this amazing news: that swimming mechanics are being added to a video game(!)

Sarcasm aside though, yeah he definitely screwed up on his end and now he'll have to deal with the consequences. It was quite a silly act on his part.

@Ragdoll72

You mean they are trying to make an example out of him.

Good. Serves him right.

@Syndrome These things are frequently being pursued, we just don't necessarily hear about all cases and often the punishment would be different such as a firing if it was an employee.

Maybe if he only gave away a bit to close friends and family, then it would just count as rumours, but using twitter was a bit asinine of the guy.

Maybe they should sue Apple for leaking the key art and name.

That's how we knew about Chapter 2 at all.

Suing him for maximum damages because he put people out of their misery...can the sad people who thought their whole world had ended because they couldn't play this crap game sue Epic for maximum mental health damages?

What a doylum like

It's simple. All the comments here that make fun of the Epic company for suing a person who broke a contract are made from people that are 17 years old or less and who've never worked in real life.

Good. It's a clear breach of contract, and has massive implications as the company invests millions to build the hype and generate the buzz.

I'd sure sue as well.

Epic Fail Games more like x3

@ShadJV Well, the vast majority of testers that actually work at Epic in Cary, NC are contractors, and thus aren't actually Epic employees.

Source: I used to be one.

Pretty sure you can't sue someone for breaking a NDA if they were never a paid employee, I think actually paying that person and having them work as an employee is a requirement for seeking damages, otherwise they are simply just banning them in a sense. It's hard to pin damages saying "this person caused us to lose money" when you never even hired them, and NDA's don't have the same effect when they aren't attached to a paid employee contract. A defense lawyer could easily argue how it was the company's responsibility to protect their own property and how unpaid testers should not be held responsible as that falls into public testing, and when companies test their products with the public they lose their ability to sue over disclosure. If they didn't want anything being disclosed they shouldn't have done public testing in the first place and should have kept it to their own paid employees. This reeks of scare tactic, a big corporation trying to bully testers over their own arrogance.

Good! Throw the book at him I say. Dude knowingly broke an NDA. It's pretty clear cut.

What's the point in signing an NDA if you're going to break it. Dummy.

As rubbish as Epic is, this is a very smart move on their part. Leakers need to be harshly punished.

@JayJ He broke an NDA, simple as that. He deserved it.

As part of the settlement with Epic, the accused must give up eating Sweet Chili Heat Doritos for a year and have his mother cut his monthly allowance by 60%

Dude definitely deserves to be punished for breaking an NDA, but in a world where 4chan has existed for over a decade, how does this guy not know to post things anonymously? How exactly did he "cash in"?

Says Sykes right now

@JayJ Show me where you must be a paid employee to be liable against an NDA because I couldn't find anything of the sort.

@JayJ If you sign a NDA you are bound to it, along with the consequences they outline if you break it. It doesn't matter who you work for. Outside contractors or testers also sign NDA's.

@Kilroy I am not saying that an NDA wouldn't be applicable, simply that they wouldn't be able to sue for damages. The NDA wouldn't be viewed the same way as a breach of employee contract.

@JayJ You said "pretty sure they can't sue," meaning you're not entirely sure. NDAs are written up uniquely, so once again, show me where it says they can't sue.

@Trikeboy Actually it does matter because that is the sort of thing that judges rule on. When it comes to trying to sue someone there isn't any room for vague or indecisive notions. You need to cite pre-existing laws and rulings if you want to have any hope of getting anywhere, and pressing a new use of law would open up appeals and higher court rulings. That would be a big expensive fiasco which would open them up to getting counter-sued so I doubt they would do such a thing. This is why I assumed this was just corporate bullying in the form of threats, it's a scare tactic.

It makes sense when you think about it, Epic is just trying to scare any testers from leaking any info in the future. They know they can't do much since the guy isn't an employee of theirs, so trying to sue the guy would mean having to operate outside of employee contract laws which makes things immensely more difficult for them.

See, if he would've had a username named Epic then Epic would have to sue themselves. Too bad though. I hate Epic anyway and their exclusive deals.

@Kilroy They can try to do whatever they want but the problem is how their NDA is simply a lawyer drafted document. If you aren't paying someone you can only get so far with such an agreement.

The likely turnout for this is Epic simply being able to ban the guy from the testing industry in a sense. They will be allowed to complain about him and warn any companies who might work with him in that field, which is normally a big no no but in this case it would likely be allowed due to the NDA breach.

We know Epic lost no money..

If he actually caused major damage, I might understand the lawsuit. Everyone knew it was coming back, a few tiny details didn't make them lose a single addicted, unsupervised 12-year old.

They should be going after him, he broke the NDA on their billion dollar game. He said he wouldn't say anything to anybody and he did it anyway. I'd say the liar got what he deserved.

If he signed an NDA and/or contract, and then purposely broke them to leak that info, then it makes sense why Epic would sue. The only reason why it sounds ridiculous and has blown up like this is because, well, it's Fortnite. I think that the "leaker" (for lack of better term) is in the wrong here, Epic is well within their rights to sue.

[Also, thinking about it, it'd seem to me like Nintendo would probably do so as well. In fact, they probably already have...]

@JayJ Unfortunately, while NDAs are commonly associated with the workplace, they are not limited to them and have been in use for decades in product testing, sexual assault cases (inc. non-work related) and a vast range of different uses.

An NDA is just a contract, like the T&Cs you agree to when you play a game on your Switch.. you can also be sued for breaching those without being employed by the company who issued them. There are many examples of this (usually against hackers).

The "not an employee" excuse is ridiculously weak as the leaker received something of value after signing a contract & broke the contract. Period.

@DanteSolablood Yeah I am by no means an expert on these cases, just relaying how this type of thing generally seems to work.

People’s word really is worthless these days even with a legal contract to back it up. Breach your contract and you are liable to get sued, simple as that. Many companies now even do a social media orientation even for contractors because people are so untrustworthy (and arrogant enough to think they won’t get caught).

If you say (legally or otherwise) you will do something... do it. Guy deserves what he gets, hopefully he’ll learn how to keep his word.

@JayJ "This reeks of scare tactic, a big corporation trying to bully testers over their own arrogance."

Holy wow do I disagree. I'm not a big fan of Epic, but they have every right to pursue a legal resolution when someone signed a contract saying, "I won't talk about this," and then they subsequently leaked it. I agree that it's not a simple case since it is difficult to monetarily quantify any damages done, but the leaker absolutely violated their NDA.

The leaker is very clearly in the wrong here.

@JayJ

@PerishSong Well luckily the big corporation doesn't need people like you defending them, they already have a team of lawyers who do that and I am pretty sure they are going to proceed with whatever they can actually do.

It seems silly, but if you sign a contract you are supposed to follow through. If there is no consequence for breaking a contract, what's the point of contracts in the first place?

Don't sign a contract if you don't agree to it.

@JayJ Honestly, it's less that I'm defending the company and more that I'm saying that the leaker shouldn't be defended. It's not like this was some shady NDA where he couldn't talk about horrible work conditions or sexual harassment. It was an NDA that's bog standard in the entertainment industry, and he very clearly violated the contract.

JayJ, you do not seem to understand what a NDA is and how they work. They will list the things you can talk about and the things you can't talk about. You have the option to sign. Once you put your signature on the paper you are bout to what the NDA says, and any and all consequences that were listed in the document you signed. It does matter one bit that the person isnt paid by them. They put their name on a piece of paper saying they won't discuss it, and he discussed it. Epic are free to persue him because he essentially gave them permission to persue him when he signed the NDA.

@Cosats amen to that

To be honest, with the way people freaked out about it, I really worry about the future of the planet.

@Trikeboy

Not to mention, the NDA would also have wording in it detailing the possible actions (fines) that you would be subject to if you broke the agreement.

The fact that this person was "unpaid" and not an "employee" doesn't protect them from any possible financial repercussions.

Let's all gets FACTS straight when you signed a NDA or TOS you gave up all rights regardless if your a employee testing the game or 3rd party you clearly knew the Game(pun) and decide you could make money from it by showing and discussing it with a outside party. If he did it after the release I doubt Epic would bat a eye on it. But this is why you have NDA/TOS or similiar enforced before you get to see what other don't get to see or test before release. So can't Game(pun) then don't game.

He signed an NDA and immediately told people about the expansion? Kind of a stupid move. I dunno how some of you can defend this kind of stupidity - you wouldn't like it if you told a friend you were getting married and they went behind your back to tell your fiancee BEFORE you got to propose. This is essentially the same thing except with a company and its game.

On one hand, not really a surprise, nobody in their right mind would believe that Epic would drop their biggest source of income.

On the other, an NDA is a very strong contract to break, and I can't defend this guy

@Rohanrocks88 He signed NDA and broke it. I am by no means fan of Epic but they have every right to sue him.