‘A necessary sacrifice’: Fortnite FNCS hacker ‘Kona’ on why he cheated

The Fortnite competitive esports scene is under huge criticism. Professional players are annoyed, to say the least, with the current rise of bugs and cheaters in the game.

'Kona,' the self-proclaimed 15-year old professional player, was recently caught cheating in the FNCS semis and open stages by RichHomieQuinn, who posted a clip of the player's exploits.

Homie sure did figure out the god strats pic.twitter.com/VwNpnC01FJ

— RichHomieQuinn (@RichHomieQu1nnn) August 10, 2020

Later, Kona decided to come online on his Twitch channel and showcase his hack live in front on his audience, which attracted attention from the Fortnite community. His hack contained several tools that gave him an unfair advantage, such as soft aiming, auto headshots, no bloom/RNG, and interestingly, control over his loot.

@FNCompetitive this your boy? Kona is literally streaming and cheating pic.twitter.com/xv1yYu9uvr

— yung picasso (@littlemanart) August 10, 2020

While loot in any battle royale game is auto-generated, the ability to customize your chances of loot rarity is incredibly broken. It could be used by just about anyone with other players being none the wiser.

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Tfue and NRG StableRonaldo react to Kona's hacks in Fortnite

Can’t wait for trio fncs w/ @KonaG_ @KquidFN we bout to run it up 💯

— Tfue (@TTfue) August 10, 2020

Other professional players like Tfue tweeted about Kona and satirically asked him for trios in competitive matches to get some easy wins with the help of his hacks.

StableRonaldo_ interviewed Kona after his account got banned and found out that Kona that he bought the hack for just $11. It took him 5 minutes to bypass Fortnite's high-security anti-cheat system and abuse it until he was caught by one of the streamers.

Later, Clix, another streamer interviewing Kona, asked him about the hacks and if there was any link that he could use to check them out. When the pair headed over to the website, it showed 11k downloads. It was indeed outrageous to know that there are so many people in the game still using these hacks and winning against players who play without them.

unbannable*

— Synergy (@Synergy1k) August 10, 2020

Kona was banned immediately when he was streaming so he couldn't play the finals when asked about his reaction towards his ban, he replied he didn't care much about it.

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Kona: "I would've won the tournament if I didn't stream."

ThatDenverGuy on YouTube had a small interview with Kona as well where he asked him about other professional players using this hack in the Fortnite esports arena, to which Kona replied "yes." Many other lesser-known professional players have been using soft aim hacks to get easy wins in higher stake competitive matches.

Kona in his interview with thatdenverguy about his hacks. (Image Credit: Thatdenverguy/YT)

Later, when asked about his response to his account ban, he answered by saying he regretted it a little. However, he stated it was a necessary sacrifice that he had to perform to bring attention to cheaters in the game. Hopefully Epic Games gets a wake-up call from this and puts out sincere efforts to fix the game.

respect pic.twitter.com/Tyn5HfASrN

— #AuraCripsix 🌟 (@CripsixHimself) August 10, 2020

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#FreeKona: Twitter reacts to Kona's Ban in Fortnite

As one would expect, Twitter exploded with mixed reactions following the incident. Many gamers took to social media to express their anger towards Fortnite and how it appears to be on the verge of decline day by day.

Its actually crazy to me that if kona wasnt exposed on twitter HE WOULD STILL BE PLAYING AND CHEATING

— Owl (@OwlFN_) August 10, 2020

While some of them started a movement called #FreeJarvis and #FreeKona while others were strongly in favor of not giving clout to a hacker as at the end he cheated in the esports scene and if not caught could have gone on to win the finals and ruin the gaming experience for actual skilled players.

With this stunt in mind, it's high time for Epic Games to take appropriate action against these hackers and hacks and keep a close eye on the competitive scene so that this kind of tomfoolery doesn't ruin the experience for other gamers.