Noahreyli, one of Europe’s most-accomplished Fortnite players, got served with an immediate in-game ban while playing Fortnite. Epic Games’ anti-cheat doesn’t seem to work quite the way it’s supposed to, as it turns out. What makes this worse is it was during the Fortnite Thanos Cup. The ban didn’t last very long, but it shouldn’t have ever happened in the first place. Why did Noahreyli get an in-game Fortnite ban at all? Suspicion of cheating, the in-game notification stated. This isn’t a player that needs to cheat to win by any stretch of the imagination.

Epic Games does have the power to ban directly. They threatened to ban Clix if he continued to do wager matches, so there is that. Could this have been the work of a petty staffer bested by Noah’s skills? Or was it something more accidental? Is Noahreyli too good? We’ll probably never know.

Live on stream, Noahreyli caught an in-game ban while playing in the Fortnite Thanos Cup, and he was suitably upset about it. While trying to compete, he was kicked out of the game. His account was banned on suspicion of cheating, which doesn’t seem likely. Noahreyli’s “What? For what?” echoed everyone else in the chat who had no idea what was going on. Perhaps it was a false negative; a player upset that Noahreyli dunked on them in-game or meant to ban someone else. We’re not sure on that point.

This went down just a week before the FNCS All-Star Showdown, one of the biggest solo tournaments in 2021. 

Thankfully, Epic Games got back to Noah in just under an hour and offered a personal apology, which Noahreyli posted on Twitter. “Hey, my name’s TheStevieT. I’m the Fortnite Community Manager for competitive. I just wanted to reach out personally to apologize for you getting a Fortnite ban today. This ban was applied by mistake and should already be reversed. You will receive a make good and are able to continue playing on your account. Once again, I”m sorry for our mistake on this and wanted to clear up the confusion you must have had.”

Noahreyli’s Fortnite ban was removed from here, and he was able to resume play in the Thanos Cup. On a positive note, Noah received a huge spike in viewers. Once word got around, he was falsely banned. The stream garnered over 9,000 concurrent viewers, so the drama sure made him look good at the very least. And he also received 2,000 V-Bucks. There’s no telling how this ban happened, but it sounds like it may have been one handed out by a staff member by mistake instead of an auto-ban. Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen to any other pros in the future! It does sound like Epic Games needs to look at their anti-cheat, though, to make sure things like this don’t happen again.