Epic Games has excluded a Twitch streamer from a major Fortnite tournament. The streamer suspects that her former work as a porn star is the reason. Meanwhile, the developer has explained in a statement why she was not allowed to participate.

Who is it about? Adriana Chechik is a former porn actress who has been active on Twitch since August 2019. She now has more than 700,000 followers and over 2,000 hours streamed on the streaming platform. Chechik now wanted to participate in a special tournament in Fortnite. To do so, she had to get confirmation from both Twitch and Epic to participate. But it seems that the second instance denied her participation.Twitch changes important rule, now lets partners join Facebook and YouTube – But not always.

Fortnite kicks ex-porn star out of event – “Epic Games did not approve of my background.”

Why was she banned from the tournament? She wanted to participate in Twitch Rivals in Fortnite. Twitch Rivals is an e-sports tournament and competitive online event consisting of Twitch streamers and professional gamers. But her participation was rejected by Epic Games, the developer behind Fortnite.

Chechik believes that Epic Games rejected her participation in the “Twitch Rivals Fortnite No Build event” due to her previous work in the porn industry. She explained that although she was approved by Twitch, Epic excluded her. Here’s what she said in her stream (via twitch.tv):

[…] I think last night. [Epic Games] decided not to admit me because of my pornographic work. So I got kicked out of the game because of my past and my adult work. Epic Games didn’t approve of my background, but that’s fine. I’m used to that, so it’s fine.

Meanwhile, there is also an official statement from Epic Games about the action. And they are of the opinion that this is merely a misunderstanding. Another streamer has now been banned from Twitch, although she had only played Ultimate Fishing.

Epic Games: “No adult references” in Fortnite

How did the developer react? In the meantime, there is an official statement about the exclusion. Thus Epic Games explains on Twitter:

We are very sorry that this happened. The request to @TwitchRivals was to work with you to remove adult references from the background of your stream due to the classification of our game. We have no problem with you participating in events or streaming Fortnite.

This is probably specifically about the background of the stream. According to some users on reddit, the streamer was actively advertising in the background for various pornographic sites. However, Epic Games didn’t like that, as they didn’t want such content in a game for children and young people. According to Epic, it was only about cleaning up the background of the stream and making it more child-friendly. There was nothing against the streamer herself and she was allowed to continue streaming Fortnite. So it was just a misunderstanding.

How does the community react? The ban is being discussed on reddit and many can understand Epic’s decision. After all, the main target group is predominantly children and teenagers. For example, one writes (via reddit.com):

If you play Fortnite, Minecraft, Mario, etc., your main target audience and customer base are kids and teens. They [die Firmen] need to protect your family-friendly image because once it’s damaged, it’s almost impossible to restore.

However, not everyone can understand this. For example, there are users who say that Epic regularly brings into play content from movies that would officially get an R rating in the US. R-rating means “Restricted” and in the U.S. it means that such movies can only be seen by people under the age of 17 when accompanied by a parent. Epic is therefore putting R-rated content into a game for teens. Fortnite has a T-rating in the US.