What Every Player Banned From Fortnite Is Doing Now

FaZe Clan's Jarvis got a lifetime ban from Fortnite after uploading a video in which he admitted to using an aimbot, a program that helps players shoot with perfect accuracy. The heavy punishment sparked a debate over whether Epic had gone too far; especially since, as fellow streamer Ninja pointed out, it took away Jarvis's means of making a living. Others, including Epic itself, said Jarvis should have known better and have defended the decision. For now, the ban is still in effect and Epic seems to be showing no signs of backing down.

So what has the former Fortnite streamer been up to since then? Mostly playing Minecraft and doing silly YouTube challenges. Despite Ninja's concerns, Jarvis losing the bread and butter of his streaming career doesn't seem to have slowed him down much. His Twitch channel still boasts 638,000 followers, and his YouTube videos regularly rack up millions of views. It's worth noting, however, that following his ban, Jarvis left the FaZe Clan's shared house in Hollywood Hills and moved back in with his mother—which isn't as bad as it sounds. She has an impressive property worth an estimated $1.7 million herself.

Some cheaters aren't quite as clever as they think. During one match in the Fortnite Championship series, the two top-ranked duos — Slackes and Keys, and Kreo and Bucke — were all caught in a Storm Surge. Storm Surge is a Fortnite mechanic designed to prevent players from hiding out for too long. If too many players are left at certain points in the match, Storm Surge will activate and hurt the players with the lowest damage counts in that match.

By trading shots with each other, the four players were hoping to stay above that threshold and survive the Storm Surge without putting themselves in any real danger. But Epic was watching this little strategy play out, and quickly responded by handing each player a two-month ban. As it turns out, working with the enemy in Fortnite is a no-no.

All four players stayed pretty quiet during their bans. Other than some "just chatting" streams, they weren't putting out much content on their channels. Their bans have since expired, however, and all of them are now back to playing Fortnite.

Seeing Tfue's name on a list of gamers who got in trouble is probably not surprising. After all, even before getting his Epic account permanently banned, the streamer's career had been littered with controversies and lawsuits. However, what got Epic to bring the hammer down permanently was Tfue's alleged buying and selling of Fortnite accounts, something that is strictly against the game's terms of service. 

Unlike some others on this list, Tfue's ban didn't hurt his career, or even seem to bother him much. He's still streaming Fortnite using a different Epic account (which seems to defeat the purpose of a ban), meaning all Tfue really lost from this ordeal is his premium skins. There's no way of knowing exactly how many of those skins he had and how much they were worth, but Tfue doesn't seem to be too worried about them. He told his fans in a short Q&A session that he doesn't care about skins anymore, and he's fine with just using standard ones. 

Whether that's true or he's just saving face is anyone's guess, but it doesn't change the fact that Tfue got right back in the saddle and kept on playing Fortnite.

What happens if you cheat by accident? That's the situation FunkBomb and Nate Hill found themselves in. During a Fall Skirmish event, FunkBomb — who had already died — mentioned a nearby enemy with low health, seemingly unaware that there was no delay in the stream he was watching and the event itself. Nate quickly took advantage of the info and sniped the enemy for an easy kill, with Funk saying it "...feels like cheating."

Apparently, Epic agreed. FunkBomb was banned from ever competing in Fall Skirmish events again, while Nate was suspended from them for a few weeks. This was a fairly light punishment (for a fairly minor violation), as both players could still compete in other tournaments, just not the Fall Skirmish. FunkBomb was able to enter the TwitchCon tournament just a month later. Despite that, he made a public apology on Twitter after the Fall Skirmish incident, saying that he realized he'd made a mistake and took full responsibility for it.

Predictably, a slap on the wrist for an understandable mistake wasn't enough to derail either player's Fortnite career. Both FunkBomb and Nate are still regularly playing and streaming the world's biggest battle royale shooter. 

Turnabout is fair play, right? On May 31, 2020, around eight months after his own ban, EJLad uploaded a video titled, "I Have To Expose A Fortnite Macro Cheater." Macros are another type of cheating software. They allow multiple commands to be bound to a single keystroke, enabling players to perform complex actions perfectly and inhumanly quickly. The person EJLad was "exposing" for using them turned out to be SerpentAU, who himself exposed many Fortnite cheaters.

A week later, SerpentAU uploaded a video response to the accusations. He admitted to having used macros in the past, but insisted that he hadn't done so recently. Time didn't seem to matter to Epic Games, though. A week and a half later on June 17, 2020, SerpentAU announced that he had been banned from Fortnite. 

As of this article's publication, Serpent has remained relatively silent. The last video uploaded to his channel is the response to EJLad's accusation, and his Twitter account gives no clues as to what his future plans are. His latest tweet promises to delete his Youtube account if it gets more than 15,000 likes, which it has, but he hasn't followed through yet. What he'll do next remains to be seen.