Fortnite announces new signaling rules for 2020 competitive play

Epic Games has announced new rules for Fortnite competitive play in 2020. In 2019, the popular battle royale title was plagued by issues of cheating across their competitive events. From players helping out one another in tournaments to the use of aimbots, we saw no shortage of problems in this area. However, Epic has stated that it plans to crack down on these issues in 2020.

Apparently, this starts today, as the developer has revealed some anti-cheat rules for the new year. These mainly include sending signals to players in Solos or Duos matches.

Signaling rules announced for competitive Fortnite

Following such a huge breakdown in 2019, Epic Games needed to install some strict rules against cheating in 2020. Fortnite’s competitive scene was marred by these issues all year long and it was time for an overhaul. However, many didn’t expect this level of severity in the new rules.

To start, Epic Games has stated the obvious: collusion among players of opposite teams is not allowed. This includes a set plan among two or more teams to help each other out with landing routes, loot etc. Here’s the blurb from the Epic Games blog post:

• Teaming: Players working together during the match while on opposing teams.
• Planned Movement: Agreement between 2 or more opposing players to land at specific locations or to move through the map in a planned way before the match begins.

However, this is not the section of the post that has the community talking. Following the collusion rule, Epic Games expresses its disdain for signaling among enemy teams in matches. According to the developers, any of the below actions in Fortnite can be cause for a suspension or banning.

• Pick-axe swinging
• Emoting
• Toy tossing
• Jumping

This list is not final, so there are other ways of signaling that can get players in trouble, such as crouching. Obviously, this is a tad controversial. The above actions are all a major part of Fortnite and, according to Epic Games, performing them can now lead to a ban. So, if you play in an official Fortnite tournament match, try to limit your jumping to a minimum when rotating.

There’s no word on how Epic plans to enforce these rules. However, we can definitely see a situation where a player gets wrongfully accused of signaling by jumping too many times.