Update:

It seems the entire mess has been sorted out! According to the father, who reached out to MP1st, he got an email from Epic saying that they’ve re-enabled the account, though the email change still isn’t happening. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

Original Story:

It’s a safe assumption that kids these days like to play video games, and one of the younger generation’s fave titles is Epic Games’ Fortnite. If you have children and they’re a fan of Fortnite, you might want to read what happened to one parent who accidentally got his son’s account permanently banned.

ResetEra user BadHand shared his tale regarding Fortnite, verifying email addresses registered under the Epic Games account of his son, and things didn’t go exactly according to plan.

I tried to update something but was being prompted to first “verify” the email address on the Epic account. I waited and waited but wasn’t receiving the email needed to verify. I then noticed that the email address used to register my son’s Fortnite account had a small typo in it… whoops, my mistake.

I tried to change the email address, but you cannot do this until it is first “verified”. I then tried to un-link his PSN account associated with the account (to link it to one with the correct credentials), but you cannot do this until it is verified either. It’s not possible to verify an email that’s wrong, obviously. I tried to then register the typo’d email address on gmail – but it’s already taken. It’s also impossible to link a PSN account to more than one Epic account.

The only thing left to do was to reach out to Epic’s support. I submitted a ticket and asked for them to modify the email address with the typo for me and submitted tons of verification that I was the account holder (IP addresses, billing information, account creation dates etc) and immediately got an email back — “changing the registered email address is not supported at this time”. 

What?

I replied to the email and requested that the PSN account associated with this Epic account be “un-linked”, so I could link it to the right email address, and have the account with the wrong email closed. I didn’t think this would be a problem as it’s something that you can do easily on their website (when verified).

I never got an email back, but I tried to log in again with the same Epic account and I got an error that the account was now “Inactive”. When I tried to manually “link” the PSN account to the correct email address, it says the “PSN account is associated to another Epic account”… well, the Epic account it is associated to is now closed and this is apparently irreversible. Firing up Fortnite on the PS4 gives a message that the account is inactive and log-in has failed.

I sent of a third email explaining and was told that it was “impossible to change due to security concerns”. 

So here I am – tried to update my son’s Fortnite account to have the correct information and he has been essentially been permanently banned because of it. Only option now would be to abandon his PSN account and create a new one, losing all progress and stuff and he’s pretty devastated 🙁

For a game aimed at younger people, the account management and technical support is confusing and limited.

While some might say this is a user error that shouldn’t be pinned on Epic Games, there should be another way to get your registered updated and verified. I mean, surely this isn’t the first email address wrongly written for the game, no?

We’ve reached out to Epic Games to see what sort of assistance they can offer the user, or if there’s some misunderstanding which can be resolved here.