Fortnite Battle Royale Scams Are on the Rise as iOS Launch Looms

Massively popular multiplayer game Fortnite is coming to iOS and Android — and scammers are taking the opportunity to try and cash in on the excitement.

On Monday, Fortnite’s developers, Epic Games, recently began taking sign-ups for for its Invite Event on iOS. Users who sign up and receive an invite will also get a few extra download codes to send to their friends. But today, Epic tweeted that it hasn’t started sending out any invites for iOS. As such, any post or social media user claiming to have an invite or extra download codes are lying.

The Sun has spotted several Twitter users who are attempting to scam potential victims. The fraudsters are claiming to have received a Fortnite invite and are offering their “extra codes.” Some of the scammers are simply asking for a retweet and a follow, while others are trying to trick Fortnite fans into paying them money via PayPal.

The scammers are apparently using a Photoshopped iOS screen that supposedly depicts the Fortnite app installed on a device. Unsurprisingly, many of the Photoshop jobs are rather poor, so it’s probably easy to spot discrepancies in the faked images.

Epic Games also noted that malicious entities could be sending users to fake and potentially dangerous websites by promising in-game rewards or items. The developer added that its official URLs are Fortnite.com and Epicgames.com. Any other website is fake.

Fortnite Battle Royale is a hugely popular multiplayer game in which players battle it out in a massive deathmatch in hopes of being the last person standing. Currently, it’s available on Windows PC, Mac, Playstation 4 and Xbox One — but, of course, Android and iOS will soon be added to that list.

As far as when the real invite codes will be sent out, that’s currently unclear. But the download codes will hit iOS devices before reaching Android.