Hundreds of Fortnite players are calling a store named "Epic Loot Games" - Sensationalist Headlines

https://kotaku.com/hundreds-of-fortnite-players-are-calling-a-store-named-1826011388 Like many customer support reps for Fortnite developer Epic Games, Hunter Davies has heard from hundreds of anxious, frustrated, and furious Fortnite players. Problem is, Hunter Davies doesn’t work for Epic Games. He works for Epic Loot Games, a small hobby shop in an Ohio strip mall that has received a great deal of unwanted attention since Fortnite’s explosion of popularity.Davies, the assistant manager at Epic Loot Games, says he sometimes “plays bartender,” listening as kids rage over lost games and “broken” weapons. Earlier this year, when the calls started pouring in, Davies’ first one left him winded.“A kid between nine and 16 screamed expletives at me,” Davies told me. “‘Fix your fucking game, fix your servers.’ Then he just hung up on me.” Over the last few months, Fortnite has spread like wildfire, becoming one of the most popular games of all time. Davies, who sells Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks and other tabletop wares for a living, refuses to play “out of spite,” he said, for the misguided customer support calls. Epic Loot Games was hosting a Magic: The Gathering event the Friday evening in March when hip-hop musician Drake and mega-popular Twitch streamer Ninja streamed Fortnite together for 600,000 viewers. After the trickle of Fortnite-related calls became a torrent, employees began tallying inquiries on a post-it note. The final count was 130. Epic Games doesn’t have live phone support for Fortnite inquiries. Most players correspond with Fortnite customer support via e-mail, and a lot of the time, those e-mails aren’t entirely personalized. They’re often constructed out of pre-packed response fragments, according to a Fortnite customer service rep who spoke to Kotaku last week. Embittered and perplexed players can’t get live tech support or—as is so often the case—the misguided catharsis they crave from letting some innocent customer support worker have it. After a little athletic Googling, “Epic Games” might morph into“Epic Loot Games,” which does indeed have a phone number listed. “There are so many calls—pranks, angry gamers, kids who don’t understand why the support doesn’t have a readily available method of contact,” said Davies. “We started telling them to use the website because they can’t actually talk to anyone on the phone.” Davies’ colleagues try to be professional when they pick up the phone, though sometimes, he says, it’s tough. When confused kids call looking for help with Fortnite issues, they’ll sometimes console them. Other times, they can’t do anything but listen in awe and explain they’re just a hobby shop in Ohio. “A really upset kid called because he said his mom is taking him to counseling because of his anger issues,” said Davies. “He was throwing controllers, cussing people out in the game. I think he got banned. He wanted us to make up for the fact he had to go to a counsellor. I tried to genuinely make him understand we weren’t affiliated, but he either didn’t care or was convinced we were the support team, we were brushing him off and we didn’t want to help him.”Once, a kid kept calling to complain that he had spent money to purchase in-game skins and did not receive them. “He kept calling on his mom’s cell phone,” Davies said, laughing. “His mom eventually picked up the phone and told us to stop calling and harassing her son.” Despite all the racket from Fortnite players, Epic Loot Games employees don’t want to change the store’s name. After expanding the store to two additional locations, Davies explained, employees are “proud of the name.” He added, “It hasn’t crossed our mind.” Yes, I know it's Kotaku, but the article was good, so I just posted the whole thing so you don't have to give them clicks if you don't want to.

Ohhhhh. That's why someone keeps trying to log into my account. What the hell

Shit, I got that too. Thought someone was attempting to hack me lol

the most popular game in the world is bound to attract some of the most annoying people in the world

Reminds me of the time a bunch of Steven Universe fans left fake reviews and whatnot on a motel that happened to share the same name as the one on an episode of the show (Keystone Motel). Though considering the popularity of Fortnite right now I imagine it's like a thousand times worse. This is what happens when any game/movie/book/tv show gets a huge following, you get a proportionate number of pricks who ruin it for the rest of the fanbase.

The accounts getting locked are actually people running accounts and password lists in hopes of finding accounts with v-bucks on them that they can sell.

I think people need to stop calling it just Fortnite and instead call it Fortnite Battle Royale, given how Fortnite was/is the original game but nobody gives a flying fuck about it, they only care about the Battle Royale part. It's just another reason why I dislike Epic Games and Fortnite really, the game was shit, but they jumped on this bandwagon and struck Diamonds.

Based on the subreddit, the Battle Royale mode actually sold the main game to a ton of people.

they should fix their stupid emails, and their damn system from sending me so many damn emails. Maybe if someone fails to login 3 times for 2 weeks straight on the same IP. Just maybe that's not me.

Even worse, epic games in all their wisdom locks you out of your account because someone in china tried to log into your account 5 times. Unless of course, you give them your cell phone for 2fa... Because i should have to give them my cell phone to access my completely secure account with a secure password... lol, no, i dont want them leaking my phone number too. Only people ignorant of best security practices think cell phone numbers should be used as a security device anyways, its nice as an option but forced on it makes people with strong passwords less secure. Its more an issue for big name streamers because anyone social engineer t-mobile, at&t or verizon and convince the rep to change your number to a different sim card, and those companies dont use phone numbers as a security method and don't expect anyone too so there aren't huge hurdles to convincing customer service to swap a sim card. I just use the engine for game dev and i'm locked out all the time because my email address with a password i only ever used once leaked from some website somewhere, so the bots hit it all day checking if that password is active. It's trash.

Some fucker got into my epic games account and for some reason I had my paypal linked, so they spent $500 bucks. I got a refund, but still mad.

Same thing happened to me recently. They didn't get into the account, but I changed the PW and added the secondary authentication.

A fitting punishment for still using the word "epic"

Referring to the posts above about people trying to log into their accounts - if you have credit cards on your accounts, remove them and don't leave them on there. Some skidmark got access to my account and made $400 in purchases on payday. Lol. Thankfully Epic Games is a great company, though, they refunded it no questions asked.

When I worked (outsourced) for T-Mobile Customer Service, if you couldn't provide the exact name on the account and the last 4 of the account holder's SSN, you were not getting anything you asked for done to an account, or any info on it. At least, that was the policy and I imagine it hasn't changed much. Of course, you can't stop shitty reps from not following procedure and giving access to accounts if you can give the phone number and any name, and if your SSN's been leaked (since like half the US got their shit leaked by Experian), well rip.

Holy shit and I thought I was alone What the fuck https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/483/97899b53-48ea-4574-af33-f9a8f9c6fa4f/Screenshot_20180515-003120_Gmail.jpg

Yeah the sign in attempts are widespread and been going on a while. Basically your email and/or password for something somewhere has likely been leaked and is on a number of lists that people are trying since Fortnite is so popular. I believe the goal is to then use your stored payment information to buy the $150 edition codes and sell them on. Basically start using 2 factor authentication.

Someone was trying to sell my Fortnite account for $500 online because it was High level StW, Limited Edition, and had a halloween skin that was from before the game really took off. He actually managed to get access to my account, but he completely forgot to disconnect my email address so I had access back in no time, and he got banned from the account marketplace for scamming.

I had this game in closed beta since like, 2015. I never expected it to explode the way it did.

Hell hath no fury like a 13 year old scorned

SSNs being used for security or even being considered secure just because they have "secure" in the name is one of the biggest joke examples of american exceptionalism there is. We refuse to have a standard ID card system as it would violate our rights, but then we allow corporations to coopt social security (as in security payment, not security secure) numbers to ID tag us all anyways, and in the process leave everyone open to identity theft and idiocy to the extreme.

Why don't they change their number and take it off Google? It must be tiring answering angry people every day.

I played 2 rounds of Fortnight and decided it wasn't for me The emails haven't stopped since

I've always kept an eye on Fortnite ever since I heard about it when I started using UE4 (back when it was $30/month). Never expected it to take off like it has at all. Also never expected to actually get into it. I couldn't get into PUBG at all, and BRs just didn't seem to be my thing. Something about Fortnite's take on it just clicked with me though. Probably helps that I still had that $30 lying around that Epic gave me after UE4 went free, and... I spent it all on Fortnite shit. I can tell you who's probably really kicking himself over Fortnite's success right now, and that's Cliffy B. He was actually on Fortnite's original development team before leaving Epic Games.

@ the people getting login attempts; those probably aren't kids, they're probably bots that are just auto slamming in the top 5 used passwords in the hopes that you're really dumb

Interesting. I send Epic Games two seperate e-mails regarding a $40 purchase made on my account, requesting if I could receive a refund and that I had already changed my password etc.. Two entire months later I received a reply "Here are steps to change your password"

use the two factor thing if you're getting those e--mail and they will stop, i'm also using a throwaway account anyway.

I guess Lawrence of Arabia can go fuck itself, huh?

Holy shit I played Fortnite for like a week in beta, decided it was trash and moved on, just checked my emails and wow there's like 5 login attempts.. these kids will do anything..

If I remember right, there was a form I filled out to request the refund. I'll try to find it for you to be sure you were at the right spot.