The CEO of Epic Games slams cryptocurrency exchanges for issuing fake Fortnite tokens.

Sweeney slammed decentralized exchanges like PancakeSwap for “enabling” illicit token trading. “Cryptocurrency marketplaces,” according to Epic Games CEO and Co-Founder Tim Sweeney, are reportedly “supporting” unofficial and unlicensed coins using the “Fortnite” moniker. Epic’s Battle Royale shooting game Fortnite is extremely popular. It was first introduced in 2017 and today has over 350 million registered users throughout the world. “There isn’t a Fortnite cryptocurrency,” Sweeney wrote. “The Twitter accounts promoting such a thing are a scam. Epic’s lawyers are on it. Also, shame on the cryptocurrency marketplaces that enable this kind of thing.” Sweeney is referring to the “Fortnite Token” (FNT), which is supposedly traded on SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, and CronaSwap, among other decentralized exchanges. A cursory search on such exchanges for the claimed scam coin yields no results, despite the fact that these decentralized exchanges allow their customers to trade nearly any token as long as they manually input the token’s contract address. “This account is operating a scam,” Sweeney wrote, referring to the Twitter account @fortnite_token. “Anybody involved in this is being scammed,” he added in another response. Despite the “CEO of Fortnite” confirming multiple times that it was a fraud, the Twitter account behind the unapproved Fortnite token sought to explain that it wasn’t. “This is a fair-launch, community-driven, Fortnite game fans-created cryptocurrency project with no specified owner or company structure behind it or a CEO deciding on its future,” the token’s account responded. Sweeney was not happy. “You can’t use the Fortnite name and images without permission to market an unrelated product,” he replied. The suspected con artists are also urging Fortnite players to use their tokens to create NFTs, which Sweeney described as a “scam.” Few people appear to be trading the FNT token, according to Nomics data. FNT has dropped 96% from its all-time high since January and is now worth virtually nothing at $0.0000007673. The cryptocurrency has only seen roughly $250 in total volume moved in the last 24 hours. This isn’t the first time that unscrupulous individuals have allegedly utilized the Fortnite brand without Epic’s permission. Scammers promised gamers that they could convert their V-Bucks, Fortnite’s non-crypto digital currency, for dollars using an unlicensed “Fortnite Coin” back in October, according to reports. Despite the fact that Epic Games does not have a Fortnite-related cryptocurrency, it is investing in Web3. GRIT, a new game from Gala Games that includes NFTs, will be the first blockchain game available on the Epic Games marketplace. NFTs are one-of-a-kind tokens that are used to prove ownership of digital assets like in-game stuff. Epic Games isn’t “touching NFTs as the entire area is currently wrapped up with an intractable combination of scams,” Sweeney previously stated in September. He clarified his views today. “When new technology emerges, some put it to good use, and others put it to bad use. It would be terribly shortsighted to ban an entire field of technology for such a reason.”