Uh-oh.
You just stepped back into Fortnite and you’re character’s wearing a new skin. Your V-bucks are completely gone, there are new items in your inventory, and maybe even a few of your accessories have disappeared. If you connected a bank account, it’s possible you’ve even been charged some amount of money for Battle Pass tiers, V-bucks, and more!
First things first: we’re sorry.
This is possibly one of the worst gaming experiences. You may feel betrayed by the game and other players, depressed by the loss of money, skins, and V-bucks, and scared that other accounts have been infiltrated as well.
Luckily, there are a few easy steps that can help you solve the issue, stop the hackers, and prevent these occurrences in the future. Let’s talk about…
What to do when your Fortnite account gets hacked
Step 1: It’s Going to be Okay
Full disclosure: when our account was hacked, we got angry at a family member that was trying to help by asking questions like, “Are you sure you were hacked? Is your bank account connected? What items disappeared? Do you have two-factor authentication? When were you last on?”
While well-intentioned, those can be aggravating questions during while you’re still trying to figure out what’s going on with your hacked account yourself. Still from personal experience, allow us to suggest this:
Don’t snap those around you, if at all possible.
We promise, it’s going to be okay. We found the Epic games customer service department to be helpful and responsive, and we believe you will as well. So once again, we’d like to remind you that everything will be alright.
Step 2: Assess the Damage
After taking a breath, try to remember a few things. Feel free to use this list and start at one end or the other:
- What items disappeared?
- What items appeared?
- How did your V-buck amount change?
- Can you log into your account?
- Were any purchases made on your account?
- Is your email account safe?
To check purchases, you may need to go to the Epic website and sign into your account. The moment you sign in, you’ll see this:
Go to “Payments” and disconnect any of the information within to prevent more transactions.
Next, go to “Payment History” to see if someone bought things without your permission using another account.
If you can’t even log into your account, go straight to “Sending an Email to Epic,” and let them know about what’s happening for further steps on verifying your identity and getting your account under control.
Account Actions
While checking your account, there are a few things you should do.
If you payed through another source (like Xbox or Playstation), go into “Connected Accounts” and removing all attached profiles – Xbox, Twitch, Switch, all of them. Epic customer service will help you remove online sessions of your account when you send an email, but it’s up to you to remove these console profiles.
Finally, once you’re sure everything’s clear, change your Epic password just in case the hacker can be shut out. You can activate 2-factor authentication now, but it will likely need to be reactivated after Epic cleans up the account.
Once that’s done, you should send Epic a message.
Sending an Email to Epic
To regain control of your Epic account, you must send an email to them.
A little honest talk before we go on: you have little to no power to fix this account issue on your own (aside from removing your payment info and console sessions). You won’t be able to send purchases back or retrieve lost items yourself, and searching through the website for an option to do so will be a pointless, stressful endeavor. But…
This system can actually makes things less worrying. Send the message and be done with it. Until they respond, take some time to clear your head and make sure your email, console profiles, and bank accounts are okay.
So, how does emailing work?
You can visit Epic’s support website, but be warned: to contact them, you’ll want to click the “Contact Us” button at the top right!
From here, you’ll encounter Epic’s friendly message creation screen:
This is where your account knowledge comes in handy: tell them what’s changed about your profile. With any luck, Epic will revert everything back to normal, V-bucks and items and payments. It may take a few days or so (no longer than a week).
We trust them to get the account issues resolved. Just remember: when Epic responds, follow the instructions they give! If you’re asked to change your password again when all account sessions are dissolved, make sure to choose a good password immediately.
For the Future
The best thing you can do for yourself is activate 2-Factor authentication from the Password and Security menu immediately.
When you enter, there’ll be two options: app authentication and email authentication. We recommend email due to the easier accessibility.
Conclusion
Loss of account security can be a horrible experience, but usually doesn’t take more than a week to fix, as long as you quickly disconnect your console profiles, remove your bank account information, and email the Customer Support department at Epic immediately. From there, remember to increase the security on all your internet accounts to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future. Soon enough, Epic will have your Fortnite account back to normal!
We hope this article helps you weather the experience with ease.
