What is Smurfing in Fortnite?
By Samuel Basel

What is smurfing in Fortnite? That became an interesting question this week after streamer Aydan "Aydan" Conrad's account was banned after being accused of smurfing on his most recent live stream.
So what is smurfing in Fortnite? Here's what you need to know:
Aydan was just banned from Fortnite for "Exploiting" aka smurfing to get easier games. Throughout the night he was mocking and laughing at his viewers who were asking him to stop. He even laughed after being banned repeatedly saying "that's comedy" what do you guys make of this? pic.twitter.com/wtQYNXXBkd
— The Fortnite Guy (@The_FortniteGuy) October 1, 2019
What is smurfing in Fortnite?
"Smurfing," a practice found on many online games with a competitive matchmaking mechanic, consists of high-skilled players using new accounts in order to reap the benefits of dominated a less-skilled opponent. Smurfing has been been a major problem in ladder-centric games such as League of Legends, Fortnite and Overwatch.
In this most recent incident, Aydan was seen on stream using an alternate account and recruiting other players to join his squads lobby.
"So, I'm doing trio arena, I need two people that I can trust, preferably sub, that have the amount of points I have or less, to be in my lobby so that I can queue up for trios, and then you guys are just going to jump off the map right away." By using this method, the other two players would simply stand back while Aydan would sweep through these other low level matches.
After a few more matches using this method, this alternate account was hit with a 24-hour ban. As this was a side account, Aydan's main account was not affected.
Image courtesy Getty Images