Epic Games has put its foot down regarding one particular pro streamer in regards to breaking the rules in Fortnite. Popular Twitch streamer Aydan Conrad, simply known as Aydan by the community and his fans, was recently suspended directly by Epic Games for his Fortnite smurf account.

Aydan’s New Account Banned for 24 Hours

For better or for worse, Aydan will only be banned for a 24 hour stretch of time, which isn’t a ton of time. For those who don’t know, Epic Games recently released some major changes to how matchmaking works within battle royale in the most recent patch notes.

The recent update was fairly massive and comprehensive, going over a ton of new additions, modes, and more for battle royale. As part of this, the developer took the time to ensure that players are experiencing better matchmaking overall no matter which platform they are on.

How it works now is that players are supposed to be matched with other players who are around the same skill level as them to ensure that really amazing players like Aydan aren’t just going to town destroying newer players who don’t know as much about the game.

In fact, the improved matchmaking is built in such a way that players are able to play together with opponents on other systems that around their same skill level. From a glance, this is a wonderful idea since it makes sure that players are, hopefully, getting the best experience possible.

What Are Smurf Accounts?

The last thing that a new player wants to happen is to go into a match, be wrecked by an amazing professional player, and not be able to do anything about it. Those are the types of situations that cause someone to potentially quit the game for good since it seems impossible to learn and get better.

However, that is the exact situation that pro streamer Aydan recently caused for many new and learning players in battle royale. To take advantage of the way that the matchmaking system works now, he created a brand new account to use in online matches.

He then took that account online and queued up for matches. Being that the game’s servers recognized the account as a brand new one, it rightfully matched Aydan with other newer accounts and players. However, what the servers didn’t realize is who was controlling the new account behind the scenes.

This led to Aydan absolutely destroying everyone in sight in the Arena Trios mode, winning several games and getting some insanely high elimination counts. When a player does something like this, creating a new account for the purpose of exploiting the matchmaking system, it is known as a Fortnite smurf account.

This is, of course, grounds for being banned or suspended in battle royale by Epic Games, which is exactly what happened. This is understandable since the pro player is able to exploit a certain design aspect of the game and use it to get a massive advantage over everyone else, which is like a form of cheating. As a result, there’s little controversy over whether or not it was appropriate for Aydan to be banned as much of the community agrees with the decision.

What This Means for the Future of the Game and Community

Unfortunately, there is the likelihood that we could see more pro players and streamers like Aydan begin to use Fortnite smurf accounts to take advantage of unsuspecting, newer players. After all, before, the matchmaking was rather random at best and you could be matched up with literally anyone.

Now, it is possible for a player to have some level of control over who they are matched with by ganking the system with their Fortnite smurf account. This is totally unfair as it makes the game uneven and unbalanced, causing frustration for anyone involved other than the exploiter themselves.

Despite the ban, the punishment is rather light for a streamer like Aydan who has a lot of reach and influence within the community. He showed off how his new account was banned on stream, and the ban is only last for 24 hours. That isn’t a lot of time at all considering he could just do it again in a day or two.

As such, Aydan was seen on stream laughing it all off and not caring too much about the consequences of his actions. This, understandably, frustrated a lot of players in the community who spoke up about his behavior. There are those who are asking Epic to take the necessary steps to prevent something like this from happening again.

There are also those who wish for harsher actions to be taken against Aydan and anyone else who would use the matchmaking system and their Fortnite smurf account to get such easy kills and wins. It is rather unfair and it also really goes to show what kind of player the exploiter is if they are resorting to such dirty methods.

Considering that Aydan proves that he is the one who created and used the Fortnite smurf account, there are even some who wish for his main account to get banned or suspended in the process for his actions. This would certainly be more of a punishment than taking away a new account since there are cosmetics and currency on there that wouldn’t be able to be accessed or used. In fact, It wouldn’t come as a surprise if we see Aydan banned by Epic for a more extensive period of time as an example.

Regardless of what Epic Games decides to do moving forward with situations like this one, it is clear that something needs to be done to ensure that newer players aren’t being unfairly taken advantage of in this way. If this continues, new players are better off with the old system of matchmaking where at least everyone is mostly on the same footing.