Sweeney discovered Twitter account @fortnite_token on Monday. It had been promoting non-fungible token (NFT) giveaways using the Fortnite brand for the past six months — without permission. The Epic Games founder replied to numerous posts, calling the project a scam and eventually threatening to sue.
Before shutting down, the Fortnite Token website listed seven different Polygon NFTs and even its own V-bucks token — not officially licensed, of course.
There isn't a Fortnite cryptocurrency. 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.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) June 6, 2022
The account replied to Sweeney, stating: “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 post is now deleted.
However, Sweeney was quick to reply with some basic facts: “That’s not how trademarks and copyrights work. You can’t use the Fortnite name and images without permission to market an unrelated product.”
As of press time, FNT is still trading on PancakeSwap in exchange for Binance Coin (BNB). However, the token is far from successful — the price is $0.0000002733, down 65% since yesterday. FNT had an all-time high of $0.00002149 in January, according to Nomics.
Fortnite Token not the first trademark snafoo
This isn’t the first knock-off token around. At the height of the Squid Game hype, SQUID token and various others were being shilled all over Facebook, without official licensing from the TV show.
Back in August of 2021, a Lord of the Rings-themed cryptocurrency known as JRR Token was launched with a promise to be the “one coin to rule them all.” However, they didn’t get very far in their crypto quest once the family and estate of JRR Tolkien decided to sue.
The Tolkien estate claimed copyright infringement and, to no surprise, the World Intellectual Property Organization sided with them, shutting down the site and all its socials.
