Over the weekend, a company called Exciting Events put on an ironically unexciting event themed around the popular game, Fortnite. As The Guardian reports, the Fortnite Live festival was deemed “underwhelming and understaffed” by attendees, with hundreds requesting refunds. Now the creator or Fortnite, Epic Games, is taking the company to court.
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Epic is suing the events company for using Fortnite’s name and imagery without permission, which Exciting Events tried to flag in a small disclaimer at the bottom of the festival’s website, but clearly wasn’t enough. I mean, the festival was literally called Fortnite Live, so it’s easy to see why Epic is pissed off.
“The quality of our player experience is incredibly important to us, whether it’s inside the game or at official public events like last year’s Fortnite Pro-Am,” an Epic spokesperson told Kotaku.
“Epic Games was not in any way associated with the event that took place in Norwich and we’ve issued a claim against the organisers in the High Court of London.”
Exciting Events has since shut down the Fortnite Live website and ceased all trading, including two upcoming events it had planned. “Epic Games, the owners of Fortnite, have now forced the shut down of the two pre-booked future Fortnite Live events,” company owner, Shaun Lord, wrote to attendees.
“These proceedings by Epic Games has had a catastrophic impact on the company’s ability to trade, which has forced Exciting Events Limited to cease all trading activities immediately and the director of Exciting Events will now seek to limit the losses to third parties as far as possible.”
The event itself sounded pretty piss-weak, featuring an average and understaffed rock climbing wall and four go karts which were meant to cater to around 3,000 guests. There was also a bunch of PCs you could pay to play Fortnite on, which you can do for free anywhere else.
Needless to say, things aren’t looking great for Exciting Events.
