In a statement, Epic Games said it sued Bamford when it emerged he had shared his account with a friend to qualify for the FNCS 2023 Global Championship - Fortnite's biggest tournament, which that year held a $4m prize pool.
"We took legal action against a player who shared their account to unfairly qualify for FNCS, now they're banned from Fortnite tournaments forever and their undeserved prize money was donated to charity." Epic Games wrote, in a message posted to its Fortnite Competitive social media account.
It is believed that six people were affected; the entire Seattle team / North American division. Team members in China were not affected.
Various news outlets have been misreporting this story, making out Thaddeus Sasser was the overall director of Marvel Rivals. That is not the case, Guangyun 'Guangguang' Chen is the creative director.
The Seattle team were tasked with R&D tasks, not active development on the game.
Whilst most game news outlets are pointing to Marvel Rivals success as "why this should not have happened" - this does not seem related to the positive reaction of Marvel Rivals. Instead, it is believe this is part of NetEase’s overseas investments and studios. The firm has pulled funding from a number of overseas teams over the past year.
Whilst unconfirmed at this time, it is claimed that Trump's tariffs on China are playing a large part of NetEase moving away from American teams.