Epic Games Fires Fortnite Caster AussieAntics | Game Rant
Epic Games has been running Fortnite's FNCS All-Star Showdown over the last couple of weeks, with players competing for a massive $3 million prize pool in the solo championships, as well as taking part in a series of other contests to test their skills. During the event, popular caster Shaun “AussieAntics” Cochrane apparently made some comments that broke Fortnite's community guidelines, seeing him being removed from casting duties until further notice.
The FNCS is a huge Fornite tournament, roughly coinciding with Fornite's season 7 and its many challenges. Epic has invited players from a number of different regions around the world to participate in the FNCS based on their performance, with the highly coveted solo championships being a competition between each region's top 100 players. Cohrane. who has a relatively large following on Twitch, has been casting the Oceania region for the tournament, with many describing him as one of competitive Fornite's best casters.
On June 26th, shortly before he was meant to cast the for the FNCS All-Star Showdown's last few regions, Cochrane took to Twitter to announce that he had been removed from the casting team for the tournament, before heading to his Twitch channel to explain the situation further. The reason given for Cochrane's removal was his behavior during the casting of Fortnite's Oceania region's solo finals, where he lambasted a player for a long period of time on his Twitch channel. This month has also seen a major Call of Duty caster meet the same fate, with companies cracking down on misconduct.
During his cast of the game, Cochrane berated a player for singling out a friend of his, LunR, who was in first place at the time and looking to take home $20,000 in prize money. The Fortnite player who went after LunR, who was performing poorly with only 17 points compared to the top player's 97, appeared to deliberately land on LunR in order to kill them and take away their win. LunR lost the fight with the player, and Cochrane went off, calling the player a "f**cking loser" several times and stating that "nobody likes" the player in question. I suppose this indicates that while Fornite might add crude characters to its game, casters are held to a separate standard, with AussieAntics' targeted harassment of the player being the direct cause of his removal from the casting team.
Epic's decision to remove AussieAntics from its casting lineup has been met with a mostly negative response, with most people feeling that the developer has been too harsh on the caster. Given the severity of his comments during the cast though, it does seem like Epic has decided Cochrane was being offensive, something they have banned professional Fortnite teams for in the past, and perhaps also showing a bias that may not fit with the company's guidelines for casting. Over the last few days there has been an outpouring of support for the caster, which could perhaps sway Epic with regards to allowing Cochrane to cast future Fortnite events.
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