Fortnite World Cup winner Aqua banned from FNCS by Epic Games

Fortnite World Cup champion David ‘aqua’ Wang has been banned by Epic Games, following controversy over alleged stream sniping against FNCS opponents.

Aqua’s trio (with Rezon and Noahreyli) have been participating in FNCS Europe and, following the Week 3 semis, were accused of stream-sniping another popular trio: Benjy ‘Benjyfishy’ Fish, Martin ‘MrSavage’ Andersen, and Kevin ‘LeTsHe’ Fedjuschkin.

Although fans initially deemed aqua’s behavior suspicious, things quickly escalated. With Benjyfishy’s team unable to qualify for the Week 3 finals and the discovery that aqua was watching MrSavage’s stream during the competition, the controversy has spiraled.

Twitch, @MrSavage

A screenshot of MrSavage’s Twitch stream showing that aqua was watching during the event.

Aqua banned by Epic Games

On October 25, aqua confirmed that his account had been banned from competitive, with Epic Games simply providing the reason as “other.”

Following condemnations of the World Cup winner’s team, rumors began circulating that aqua, Rezon, and Noahreyli had been banned by participating past the first match of the Finals. 

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It was never officially legitimized and has since been made even more unclear by responses from some of the involved parties.

After the rumor mill buzzed with the reports that aqua’s team was banned from competing, he took to Twitter and gave a concise clarification denying those allegations: “We are not banned, we just don’t wanna play. It’s boring without early fighting Benjy.”

Given the difficulty inherent to confirming someone was in fact stream-sniping and didn’t coincidentally run into a fellow streamer, many believe it is unlikely that the World Cup winner has actually been exiled from the competition.

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Additionally, some have noted that bans typically result in removal from the leaderboard, something that aqua’s team has not been hit with.

As for how the players are handling it, aqua and Benjyfishy simply joked about the incident.

At 17 years old, aqua represented his home country of Austria to the fullest by winning the 2019 Fortnite World Cup’s Duos event with Norway’s Emil ‘Nyhrox’ Bergquist. With a smooth $1.5 million earned from the World Cup, he’s since signed with Cooler Esport and continued to win competitions across Europe.

We will continue to update this article with more details as they become available.